470 
ARTICULATA. 
[Chap. XIII. 
Ail officer in the East India Company's Service l , in a 
communication to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, describes 
the gigantic web of a black and red spider six inches in 
diameter, (his description of which, both in colour and 
size, seems to point to some species closely allied to 
the Olios Taprobanius,) which he saw near Monghyr 
on the Granges ; in this web " a bird was entangled, and 
the young spiders, eight in number, and entirely of a 
brick red colour, were feeding on the carcase. 2 
The voracious Galeodes has not yet been noticed in 
Ceylon ; but its carnivorous propensities are well known 
in those parts of Hindustan, where it is found, and 
where it lives upon crickets, coleoptera, and other 
insects, as well as small lizards and birds. This " tiger of 
the insect world," as it has aptly been designated by a 
gentleman who was a witness to its ferocity 3 , was seen 
to attack a young sparrow half grown, and seize it by 
the thigh, which it sawed through. The " savage then 
caught the bird by the throat, and put an end to its 
sufferings by cutting off its head." " On another occa- 
sion," says the same authority, " Dr. Baddeley confined 
one of these spiders under a glass wall-shade with two 
young musk-rats (Sorex Indicus), both of which it 
destroyed." It must be added, however, that neither in 
the instance of the bird, of the lizard, or the rats, did 
the galeodes devour its prey after killing it. 
covered bodies, with, projecting spines, arching obliquely backwards. 
knobs arranged in pairs. In habit These abnormal kinds are not so 
these anomalous-looking Epeiridat handsomely coloured as the smaller 
appear to differ in no respect from species of typical form. 
the rest of the family, waylaying 1 Capt. Sherwill. 
their prey in similar situations and 2 Jour. Asiat. Soc. Bengal, 1850, 
in the same manner. vol. xix. p. 475. 
Another yery singular subgenus, 3 Capt. Hutton. See a paper 
met with in Ceylon, is distinguished on the Galeodes vorax in the 
by the abdomen being dilated be- Journal of the Asiatic Society of 
hind, and armed with two long Bengal, vol. xi. Part n. p. 860. 
