ON ARACHNIDA. 459 



leaving its visiting card." (Lescallier, Notes sur la traduct. 

 Frang. du Voyage da Capitaine Stedman.) 



Pison relates that the mygale of which we have spoken a 

 little farther back, sheds its hairs with age, and that then, the 

 skin of its belly is of a pale carnation colour. 



Madlle. Merian informs us that she had found many in- 

 dividuals of the mygale avicularia on the tree named guajave, 

 there making their domicile, and remaining in ambush in the 

 cocoon, which is formed by a caterpillar of the same tree, for 

 its change into the form of a chrysalis. She assures us ex- 

 plicitly, that this mygale does not spin long cocoons, as some 

 travellers would have us to believe. The majority of the 

 other testimonies which we could allege here, do not appear 

 to us of great authority, either because they were not ocular, 

 or because it is difficult to ascertain to what species of 

 araneides they should be applied. The author of the Natural 

 History of Equinoxial France, places the habitation of the 

 avicularia, or that of some other species, in the clefts of rocks. 

 In Stedman's Voyage to Guyana, this animal is called the 

 hush-spider, and its web is said to be of small extent, but 

 strong. The tnygale avicularia is provided with two long 

 spinnerets ; thus there can be no doubt of its capacity for 

 .spinning. But when we examine the form of the hooks of its 

 tarsi, when we find them so small, and almost without denti- 

 culations, and thus so different from those of the industrious 

 araneides, we must feel inclined to refuse to this mygale the 

 faculties which the majority of the araneides possess, and to 

 suppose that its strength may suffice for all the purposes of 

 its existence. It lives, according to Madlle. Merian, on ants, 

 which escape with difficulty from its vigilance and pursuit. 

 In failure of these it endeavours to surprise small birds in 

 their nests, wdiose blood it sucks with avidity. This change 

 of nutriment is rather different, but the appetite of the animal 

 is equally voracious and accommodating. The ants occa- 



