THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



No. 77.] MAY, MDCCCLXX. [Price 6d. 



Note on the " Gregarious Spiders of Paraguay.^'' By the 

 Rev. O. Pickard-Cambridge, M.A. 



Facts are stubborn things, and if reliance is to be placed 

 on the accuracy of Mr. Masterman's observations in regard 

 to the gregarious spiders, of which he writes, in his * Seven 

 Eventful Years in Paraguay' (Entom. iv. 359), the received 

 theory of arachnologists must undergo considerable tension 

 to admit of his facts. The facts alluded to are, first, that the 

 spiders were " not content with merely sucldng the juices of 

 their prey, but devoured the soft parts altogether;" next, 

 " that they swallow every part of their web that may be 

 broken with the wind. If such an accident occurred, the 

 nearest spider gathered up the loose threads, rolled them into 

 a bale (query, ball),' acnd immediately ate it." Mr. Masterman 

 goes on to say, " I have arrested them in the act, and found 

 that the silk had been abundantly moistened with clear saliva 

 preparatory to bolting it." Against the possibility of spiders 

 doing this is the structure of that part which corresponds to 

 the " throat" in other animals : this, as far as the anatomical 

 researches of arachnologists goes, is a mere tube, and (as 

 quoted by Mr. Birchall from Blackwall) " minute," and " only 

 adapted for the passage of liquids;" but how^ are we to get 

 over what is stated by Mr. Masterman so minutely and cir- 

 cumstantially ? He seems to have particularly directed his 

 attention to those points upon which he states the result of 

 his observations ; he " satisfied himself" that they devoured 

 the soft parts of their prey, leaving only the wings of moths 

 and the horny parts of beetles, and " arrested them in the 

 act" of bolting balls of web. If it did not look like pre- 

 sumption to doubt the accuracy of such apparently well- 

 observed occurrences, 1 would suggest that the shrivelling 

 and speedy disappearance in a hot climate of the soft parts 

 of insects when sucked dry might cause a superficial observer 



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