rOOD OF INSECTS. 



355 



part of the world formed of such fragile materials as those 

 which we are accustomed to see, or that they are every where 

 contented with small insects for their food. An author in 

 the Philosophical Transactions asserts, that the spiders of 

 Bermudas spin webs between trees seven and eight fathoms 

 distant, which are strong enough to ensnare a bird as large 

 as a thrush.' And Sir G. Staunton informs us, that in the 

 forests of Java, spiders' webs are met with of so strong a tex- 

 ture as to require a sharp cutting instrument to make way 

 through them.^ The nets of a large geometric spider, Nephila 

 {Epeira) clavipes, are sufficiently strong to arrest and entangle 

 the smaller species of humming-birds ; but Mr. W. S. Mac- 

 Leay, in whose garden at Cuba these nests abounded, never 

 saw or heard of any birds being caught in them.^ On the 

 other hand, however, he observed in the grounds of Elizabeth 

 Bay, near Sydney (Australia), in the beginning of 1840, a 

 young bird (^Zosterops dorsalis), which had been apparently 

 dead some days, suspended in the geometrical net of an enor- 

 mous undescribed spider of the same family {E-peiridcE), 

 which was in the act of sucking its juices ; and his father, 

 Alexander MacLeay, Esq., informed him that he had also 

 been witness to a similar occurrence ; but he considers these 

 facts as exceptions to the general rule of this spider's in- 

 sectivorous habits and to be of rare occurrence, since, as far 

 as he could learn, no other persons had observed them.* 



Nor must you suppose that all the spiders of this country 

 which catch their prey by means of snares follow the same 

 plan in constructing them as the weavers and geometricians 

 whose operations I have endeavoured to describe. The form 

 of their snares and the situation in which they place them are 

 so various, that it is impossible to enumerate more than a few 

 of the most remarkable. Agelene labyrinthica extends over 

 the blades of grass a large white horizontal net, having at its 

 margin a cylindrical cell, in the bottom of which, secure from 

 birds and defended from the rays of the sun, the spider lies 

 concealed, whence, on the slightest movement of her net, she 



1 Phil. Tr. 1668, p. 792. 2 Embassy to China,\.343. 



3 Trans. Zool Soc. Lond. i. 193. 4 Jnn. Nat. Hist. viii. 324. 



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