48 AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THETR SPINNINGWORK. 
Mr. Henry O. Forbes relates a similar experience of deception.1 He had 
been allured into a vain chase after a large stately flitting butterfly (Hestia) 
through a thicket of Pandanus horridus, when on a bush that obstructed 
further pursuit he observed one of the Hesperide resting on a leaf upon 
a splash of bird dropping. He had often observed small Blues at rest on 
similar spots on the ground, and had wondered what the members of such 
a refined and beautifully painted family (Lycenidee) could find to enjoy in 
food so seemingly incongruous for a butterfly. He approached 
Mimicry with gentle steps and ready net to see, if possible, how the present 
eee individual was engaged. It permitted him to get quite close, 
and even to seize it between his fingers. To his surprise, howeyer, 
part of the body remained behind ; and in adhering, as he thought, to the 
excreta it recalled an observation of Mr. Wallace’s on certain Coleoptera 
falling a prey to their inexperience by boring in the’ bark of trees, in whose 
exuding gum they became unwittingly entombed. He looked closely at the 
excreta to find if it were glutinous, and finally touched it with the tip of 
his finger. To his delighted astonishment he found that his eyes had been 
most perfectly deceived, and that the excreta was a most artfully colored 
spider lying on its back, with its feet crossed over and closely adpressed 
to the body. 
The appearance of recent bird droppings on a leaf is well known. Its 
central and denser portion is a pure white chalk like color, streaked here 
and there with black, and surrounded by a thin border of the 
Ornitho- dried up more fluid part, which, as the leaf is rarely horizontal, 
scatoides . ‘ y 5 
audiciarn: often runs a little way towards the margin. ‘The spider observed 
by Mr. Forbes, like that seen by Mr. Webster, was pure chalk 
white in general color, with the lower portions of its first and second pairs 
of legs and a spot on the head and abdomen jet black. It had woven 
on the surface of the leaf, after the fashion of its family, an irregularly 
shaped web of fine texture, which was drawn up towards the sloping mar- 
gin of the leaf into a narrow streak, with a slightly thickened termination, 
This form, as described by Mr. Forbes, was doubtless determined by 
the concavity of the leaf, and the facility which the slightly turned up 
edges gave for making good points of adhesion, at the same time leaving 
a little space between the netted spinningwork and the leaf’s surface over 
which it was stretched. According to Mr. Forbes, the spider takes its place 
on its back upon this irregular spinningwork, holding itself in position by 
means of the spinal armature of the legs thrust underneath the web, and 
crosses its legs over its thorax. I do not remember to have observed any 
Thomisoids in this position, but have always seen them crouching with 
back upward when not using a web. I would suppose that if they used 
1 A Naturalist’s Wanderings in the Eastern Archipelago, 1885, pages 63, 64. 
2 Rey. O. P. Cambridge describes it as Ornithoscatoides decipiens. 
