Chap. XIII.] 



SPIDEES. 



467 



discerned the other and stood still, the spider with his 

 legs slightly bent and his body raised, the cockroach 

 confronting him and directing his antennae with a rest- 

 less undulation towards his enemy. The spider, by 

 stealthy movements, approached to within a few inches 

 and paused, both parties eyeing each other intently ; 

 then suddenly a rush, a scuffle, and both fell to the 

 ground, when the blatta's wings closed, the spider seized 

 it under the throat with his claws, and dragged it into 

 a corner, when the action of his jaws was distinctly 

 audible. Next morning Mr. Layard found that the 

 soft parts of the body had been eaten, nothing but the 

 head, thorax, and elytra remaining. 



But, in addition to minor and ignoble prey, the Mygale 

 rests under the imputation of seizing small birds and 

 feasting on their blood. The author who first gave 

 popular currency to this story was Madame Merian, a 

 zoological artist of the last century, many of whose 

 drawings are still preserved in the Museums of St. Pe- 

 tersburg, Holland, and England. In a work on the 

 Insects of Surinam, published in 1705 1 , she figured the 

 Mygale avicularia, in the act of devouring a humming 

 bird. The accuracy of her statement has since been 

 impugned 2 by a correspondent of the Zoological Society 

 of London, on the ground that the mygale makes no 

 net, but lives in recesses, to which no humming-bird 

 would resort ; and hence, the writer somewhat illogically 

 declares, that he " disbelieves the existence of any bird- 

 catching spider." 



1 Dissertatio de Generatione et 

 Metamorphosibus Insectorum Suri- 

 namensium, Amst. 1701. Fol. 



2 By Mr. MacLeay in a paper 



communicated to the Zoological 

 Society of London, Proc. 1834, p. 

 12. 



H H 2 



