66 TfiE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



to conclude that the spiders had actually devoured those 

 parts. Again, in regard to the balls of web, spiders when 

 encumbered with a lot of slack threads issuing from the 

 Sj)inners are, in my own experience, in the habit of gathering 

 it up with the hinder legs; and we might suppose that a 

 quantity of broken web encumbering the spider would speedily 

 be gathered up and form a little ball (or bale), which might 

 very probably be transferred to the falces for deportation, in 

 the sanie way that our common Pholcus phalangioides carries 

 its lillle bag of eggs in its falces, and a superficial observer 

 n)ight conclude tliat the transfer of the ball to the mouth 

 could only be for the purpose of its being devoured : all this, 

 however, is but supposition, and will perhaps be held to have 

 no weight against such minutely observed facts as those 

 commented upon : the question seems, therefore, to be 

 whether it is more probable that Mr. Masterman's spiders 

 differed in their pharyngeal structure from what is believed 

 to be that of spiders in general, than that Mr. Masterman was 

 mistaken, in spite of his apparently close observations. To 

 most people this issue would leave the matter where it com- 

 menced, inasmuch as we have but few examples of spiders 

 whose pharyngeal apertures have been anatomically examined, 

 and no evidence before us of Mr. Masterman's character as 

 an observer in Natural History. For myself 1 must confess 

 that if the balls of silk did not stick in the spiders' throats, 

 the account given of their free passage certainly sticks in 

 mine, and I do not hesitate to say that it would require the 

 closest and clearest observation of a most skilful and scientific 

 observer to induce me to believe that the structure of any 

 spider's throat could admit of swallowing pieces of solid 

 matter. 



In other respects Mr. Masterman's account of the gregarious 

 spiders is graphic and interesting: one other point, however, 

 requires to be noticed. Mr. Masterman states that his 

 spiders had but " four eyes," and Mr. Birchall, in allusion to 

 this, asks, " whether there are any four-eyed spiders known ! " 

 Until a iew months ago no reliable record of such is believed 

 to have existed : lately a four-eyed genus has been described 

 in the 'Journal of the Linnean Society' (vol. x. p. 398, 

 pi. xiv. 1869), so that it may be Mr. Masterman's spiders 

 really had no more than four eyes, but I am inclined to think 



