INSECT ODDITIES. 261 
spinnaret occupies a position on the under surface of the body that is precisely 
coincident with the creature’s centre of gravity. The long-tailed Spider here figured 
was obtained by the writer in the Botanical Gardens of Ballarat, Victoria. A closely- 
allied representative of the same genus was also found by him in some abundance, 
spinning an irregularly meshed snare among the Ti-tree bushes, Melaleuca, on the 
banks of the Prosser’s river, Tasmania, The bright-green, crimson-striped Spider, 
apparently a species of Tetragnatha, represented in Fig. 11 of the Insect Plate, is 
more notable for its abnormally elongate shape and for its conspicuous resemblance, 
when it rests with extended legs, to the many red-veined foliaged plants among which 
it takes up its abode. This single example noted was collected by the writer in the 
Botanic Gardens at Bowen, Central Queensland. 
A remaining spider form included in Chromo-Plate IX. invites brief notice. 
It is represented by Figs. 12 to 15. This type is apparently referable to the genus 
Theridium, and is remarkable more especially with relation to its habits and the 
singular environments of its egg cocoon. It was observed by the writer in the 
neighbourhood of Derby, at the head of King’s Sound, Western Australia, taking up 
its abode in the fissures of the gnarled trunks of the older Baobab or Bottle-trees, 
Adansonia rupestris. The spider, a small brown one, presents no special features of 
interest, and neither does the web, which is of the irregularly meshed order. 
Suspended in the snare, however, there is generally present a little cupola-shaped 
mass, which, on near examination, is found to be composed superficially of the 
emptied skins and disjointed limbs of a small species of black ant upon which this 
spider habitually feeds. The interior of this ant aggregation is hollow, and is found 
to contain in its upper confines the spherical silken egg cocoon of its fabricator, 
which it has most effectively and ingeniously concealed from view. It sometimes 
happens that two or three of these egg domes are suspended within one web, and 
while the bee-hive or cupola shape depicted in Plate IX. represents the most ordinary 
form, they are occasionally of a much more slender and elongate contour. An allied 
American form, Theridium riparium, is recorded in Dr. McCook’s treatise as forming 
-somewhat similar elongate conical nests, the external surface of which is strengthened 
and rendered opaque by the addition of a thickly entangled coating of minute pellets 
of clay. 
A common, but at the same time notable, spider in the Queensland “scrubs,” 
which also frequently takes up its abode in the Brisbane suburban gardens, is 
portrayed on the following page. It is apparently identical with the Ar7giope 
