The Humming Bird. 35 



for a specimen of the Oven Bird (Furnarius rufus), from 

 Buenos Ayres. It is a bird of about the same size of a 

 Thrush, which it somewhat resembles in general appearance, 

 except that the breast is not spotted. The Cuckoo had been 

 placed in a small cage in a recess to the aviary, and looked 

 very crestfallen at having been turned out of his spacious 

 apartment to make room for a new-comer. While I was 

 there, he gave utterance to the usual cry of his family, 

 "cuck-oo/' but in a very deep, resonant tone, strikingly 

 different to the sprightly call of his English cousin. Horsfield's 

 Scops Owl (Scops tempyi) , from Malacca, and a pair of the 

 Sahara Bunting (Fringillaria saharœ) , from North Africa, 

 occupied two adjacent cages, as they did on the occasion of 

 my last visit. The Undulated Grass Parroquets (Melop- 

 sittacus undulatus) , and the Large Hill Mynahs (Gracula 

 intermedia) , from Australia and India respectively, were also 

 in the same place as before. 



In a small glass case next to the Mynah's cage were some 

 curious spiders from Bahia, Brazil. These were Tree Trap- 

 door Spiders. 



The ordinary Trap-door Spiders make a burrow in the 

 earth, with a cleverly constructed lid to it, composed of earth 

 and silk, opening on a hinge of the latter article. When 

 closed, this lid is exactly level with the surface of the ground, 

 and, the top being of earth, it is perfectly indistinguishable 

 from its surroundings. The spider slightly lifts the edge of 

 this extraordinary trap-door, and watches for unwary insects 

 that chance to pass that way. In the case of the particular 

 species mentioned above, its habits are much the same, except 

 that the burrow is constructed in the trunk of a tree instead 

 of in the ground, the trap-door being made to assimilate with 

 the surrounding bark. Three or four very good photographs 

 above the case show the spider in the act of entering and 

 leaving his tunnel, and by comparing them with the pieces of 

 tree-trunk, one is enabled, after some difficulty, to detect the 

 entrances to the burrows, the spiders themselves being rarely 

 visible. I should think that these curious creatures must 

 make a very good living, tree-trunks being such favourite 

 resorts for all kinds of insects, especially in a country like 

 Brazil, where insect life is so prolific. 



Next to the spiders is a case of pupae of the Bat Hawk- 

 moth (Deilephila vespertilio) , a European species which 

 somewhat resembles the better-known Spurge Hawk-moth 

 (D. Euphorbias) j found in some places on the British coast. 

 Their next door neighbours were the giant snails (Bulimics 



