NOTES AND QUERIES. 31 
some qualities. Particular Wasps seem to prefer particular Spiders, and 
in nearly all the nests I have examined there has been a marked pre- 
ponderance of one species. The favourite species varies of course in 
different districts, but there seems further to be a certain amount of in- 
dividual preference. 
With regard to the other side of the picture, I have seen much fewer 
cases. ‘The most daring Spiders that have come under my notice are the 
protectively coloured crab-like species which frequent flower-heads, and I 
have not unfrequently seen them engaged in sucking various small species 
of stinging Hymenoptera, which they seem almost always to seize by the 
neck between the head and thorax ; but these Spiders themselves frequently 
fall a prey to the larger Mason-Wasps. Among the web-Spiders, I have 
seen Hymenoptera roost often eaten by the curious little Sociable Spider, 
which lives in societies, forming a thickly felted nest varying in size from 
that of a cricket-ball to a man’s head, and traversed throughout by inter- 
secting galleries, being surrounded on all sides by an irregular and some- 
times far-reaching snare. In this case, however, the Wasp is caught in the 
highly glutinous web during the day, and struggles on till sundown, when 
at last the Spiders emerge; three or four of them set on him, and with a 
quick bite here and a bite there soon despatch him in his tired state, and 
the body is then dragged off to the nest to be discussed; for these Spiders 
do not enshroud their victims. The Sociable Spiders feed principally on 
crepuscular beetles (Melelonthide for the most part), but I have found many 
different and unlooked-for insects in their webs, such as large Mylabride, 
migratory locusts, &c., all of which had been eaten. 
In experiments I have made in putting Wasps into the webs of a 
species of Nephile, the Spider has either beat a hasty retreat to its lair or 
else promptly cut the intruder loose. Indeed, so far as my small experience 
goes, it certainly seems the exception for a web-Spider to attempt to make 
a meal off anything in the shape of a Wasp-—Guy A. K. Marsan 
(Salisbury, Mashunaland). 
