Chap. XIII.] 



SPIDERS. 



469 



For my own part> no instance came to my knowledge 

 in Ceylon of a mygale attacking a bird ; but Pekcival, 

 who wrote his account of the island in 1805, describes 

 an enormous spider (possibly an Epeirid) thinly covered 

 with hair which " makes webs strong enough to entangle 

 and hold even small birds that form its usual food." 1 



The fact of its living on millepeds, blattae, and 

 crickets, is universally known ; and a lady who lived at 

 Marandahn, 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 upon 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, yol. 

 dead, and was covered in parts xiii. p. 480. 

 with a filthy liquor or saliva 1 Percival's Ceylon, p. 313. 

 exuded by the monster. " The 2 Over the country generally are 

 species of spider," Mr. Bates says, scattered species of Gasteracantha, 

 " I cannot name ; it is wholly of a remarkable for their firm shell- 



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