MYGALIDy^. 53 



CASE (never in the daytime) to attack these insects ; and so far from 

 its having any bird-catching propensities, Mr. MacLeay having 

 placed a Hving humming bird in the tube of a Mygale, it deserted 

 it, leaving the bird untouched. Still, the size of the spider is 

 sufficiently great to render it not impossible, and the deleterious 

 effects of its venom have been sufficiently proved to render it 

 likely that if employed on small birds it might kill them. And 

 if we cannot cite direct proof that its prey is often small verte- 

 brate animals, we can at least give some indirect circumstantial 

 evidence to that effect. As we write we have received an e?woi 

 and a communication from our friend the Rev. Dr. R. H. Nassau, 

 one of the American missionaries on the coast of Gaboon. He 

 sends an enormous Mygale, of which he says, " It was caught 

 here" (Akele country, 200 miles up the river Ogove, and 150 

 miles from the sea) " last June. One of the boys in pursuing it 

 struck it and smashed its body. I was exceedingly disappointed 

 at its mutilation, but the head is complete. / 7aas amazed at the 

 amoicnt of blood that flowed from It." It is plain that Dr. Nassau 

 here uses blood in its ordinary sense, viz., red blood ; and if so, 

 then it is equally clear that the blood could not be the spider's 

 blood, which is colourless. It was obviously blood freshly sucked 

 from some small vertebrate animal, such as a mouse or a bird. 

 It is not uncommonly supposed that the way in which the spider 

 obtains the humming-birds is by catching them in its web, which 

 was imagined to be of proportionate strength and size to its own 

 dimensions as compared with those of other spiders. This at 

 least is a mistake. It spins no such web. It does indeed spin a 

 cocoon of white silk to contain its eggs, but not a web. It is a 

 hunting spider, and lies in ambush in its nest or in crevices or 

 burrows, which it makes for the purpose, and catches its prey by 

 rushing out upon it or hunting it. 



Nos. Mygale californica. — 3. Sketch, natural size. From California. 4. 

 ^' ^' Specimens of do. 



The genus extends from Tropical America northwards on the 



