PROCURING FOOD AND FEEDING. 263 
This mode of drinking as described by Mr. Campbell accurately ex- 
presses the common method as I have observed it. In the case of large 
spiders that have long been kept from water, such, for example, as Hentz’s 
tarantula, the spider will sometimes rush to the water, greedily drop the 
maxille and mouth organs into it, the body being partly sustained in 
the meantime by the outspread legs. Sometimes the mouth will be lifted 
up for a little while, and then again sunk into the water. 
Many sedentary spiders, and indeed numbers of other tribes, must ob- 
tain a considerable supply of water during the process of cleansing them- 
selves. The little drops of dew and rain which gather upon the hairs of 
the legs are brushed or squeezed into the mouth when the limbs are drawn 
through the mandibles in the process of toilet making, as described in 
Vol. II. of this work. 
Cambridge observes that drought as well as excess of wet, but more 
especially the former, and unseasonable weather of all kinds have a strong 
effect in reducing the number of spiders. Some species found in marshy 
places are so susceptible to injury, from lack of moisture, that they cannot 
be carried alive in a box for more than an hour or two, unless a small por- 
tion of damp moss be placed with them. Others, on the contrary, appear to 
thrive best on the most arid spots, and in the hottest sun. As a rule, how- 
ever, spiders are thirsty souls, constantly requiring water to drink.? 
I have received one authentic report of spiders drinking milk. It was 
sent me by Mrs. Mary Treat, to whom it was communicated by one of her 
lady correspondents, Mrs. J. B. Harrison. The species referred 
to was not identified, but the statement made is that the spider 
spun a thread from the side of a box down to a milk pan, and 
then deliberately and carefully descended inside the vessel until it came to 
the milk, which it then sucked. This was observed in several cases. One 
cannot help wondering whether the spider's taste was sufficiently keen to 
distinguish between the milk and its ordinary drink. Probably not. The 
same lady speaks of a spider whose snare was on a pump in the yard, and 
which every night spun a delicate line just across the spout, and from this 
position procured drinking water. 
Does the spider eat its web? is a question which has often been asked, 
and variously answered by both scientific and non scientific observers. In 
point of fact, the Orbweaver does eat its web. It is its invari- 
able habit to gather together the particles of its broken snare, 
when it clears away the wreckage to make a new web, and ball 
it underneath its jaws with its feet and palps. It then takes it into its 
mouth and apparently sucks from it all the viscid material and all the 
other nutritious matter—dealing with it, so far as I can observe, very much 
in the same way that it does with a fly. 
The manner in which a fractured web is eaten may be frequently seen 
Drinking 
Milk. 
Hating 
Its Web. 
1 Cambridge, “Spiders of Dorset,” Introduction, page xxxii. 
