Chap. XIII.] 
SPIDEKS. 
469 
For my own part, no instance came to my knowledge 
in Ceylon of a mygale attacking a bird ; but Percival, 
who wrote his account of the island in 1805, describes 
an enormous spider (possibly an Epeirid) thinly covered 
with hair which <s makes webs strong enough to entangle 
and hold even small birds that form its usual food." 1 
The fact of its living on millepeds, blattaB, and 
crickets, is universally known ; and a lady who lived at 
Maranclahn, near Colombo, told me that she had, on 
one occasion, seen a little house-lizard {gecko) seized 
and devoured by one of these ugly spiders. 
Walckenaer has described a spider of large size, under 
the name of Olios Taprobanius, which is very common 
in Ceylon, and conspicuous from the fiery hue of the 
under surface, the remainder being covered with gray 
hair so short and fine that the body seems almost 
denuded. It spins a moderate-sized web, hung verti- 
cally between two sets of strong lines, stretched one 
above the other athwart the pathways. Some of the 
threads thus carried horizontally from tree to tree at a 
considerable height from the ground are so strong as to 
cause a painful check across the face when moving 
quickly against them ; and more than once in riding I 
have had my hat lifted off my head by one of these 
cords. 2 
the size of the common Siskin of gray brown colour, and clothed 
Europe, and he judged the two to with coarse pile." " If the My- 
be male and female ; one of them gales," he adds, " did not prey 
was quite dead, but secured in the iipon vertebrated animals, I do not 
broken web ; the other was under see how they could find sufficient 
the body of the spider, not quite subsistence." — The Zoologist, vol. 
dead, and was covered in parts xiii. p. 480. 
with a filthy liquor or saliva 1 Peecival's Ceylon, p. 313. 
exuded by the monster. " The 2 Over the country generally are 
species of spider," Mr. Bates says, scattered species of G aster acantha, 
" I cannot name ; it is wholly of a remarkable for their firm shell- 
H H 3 
