262 NATURE NOTES. 
No one has hitherto been able to give me a satisfactory explanation of this 
strange occurrence. 
T. R. S. F. 
Frog, Toad and Snake (pp. 218, 238). — At the latter reference Mr. 
Kelsall writes : “I have only once seen a snake eating a toad, and imagine that 
it was by mistake ; indeed I think it was trying to spit it out.” I believe, on the 
contrary, that the snake feeds upon both frogs and toads quite impartially. I 
formerly “went in ” for keeping British reptiles, and have caught many snakes, 
which always, if they had been lately feeding, threw up their prey, sometimes in 
a semi-digested condition, in their terror at being themselves captured ; and in 
my experience this prey was a toad quite as often as a frog. 
Walpole Vicarage, Halesworth. W. R. Tate. 
Spring and Harvest meeting. — In this parish in the present year 
(1896), I last heard the cuckoo — its full note — on July 9, and the first field of 
oats in the parish was cut the next day, July 10, the earliest date I have ever 
known. It is certainly unusual that spring and harvest-tide should thus meet. 
Here in East Suffolk the cuckoo calls well into July about one year in three. 
Has any correspondent noticed this in other districts? Until I came into Suffolk, 
I remember that the cuckoo (in Surrey, Dorset, and Kent) always altered its 
cry of “cuckoo! cuckoo!” incessantly repeated, into “ cuck-cuck-cuck ! ” as 
soon as June set in, and was quite silent some ten days before July. In Suffolk, 
I one year heard it still repeating its full call so late as July 13. 
Walpole Vicarage, Halesworth. W. R. Tate. 
A Spider’s Web (p. 237). — Probably the fact that spiders eat their webs 
(on a principle of economy) is very generally known. I proved it many years 
ago by an experiment I had read of, viz., cutting a web across with a pair of 
scissors. As soon as the spider had recovered from his scare he commenced 
rolling up the collapsed halves and eating them one after the other. This year 
I had an opportunity of watching the same process without any test. A large 
spider had planned his web, with evident forethought, outside our dining-room 
window. From the outer edge of the brickwork above, and almost exactly in 
the centre, he had dropped a stout cord of web, which, about half-way down, 
was split in two and attached to two evergreens in pots on the window sill. The 
triangle thus formed laid the foundation (to speak in topsy-turvy fashion) of 
his web. This foundation, though he was there for two or three weeks, I never 
saw him destroy, and I did not watch regularly enough to say he devoured the 
rest of his web every day, but I very frequently saw him rolling it up methodi- 
cally towards evening. Possibly he was influenced by its condition of necessary 
stickiness, and whether it had been much torn by captured flies. By eight 
o’clock in the morning he had finished the framework and rays of a new web, 
and was plodding away at the filling-in part round and round. I often wished I 
could have seen him at the earlier and more ingenious work, but it would have 
involved very early rising, and I never achieved it. Perhaps for my reputation 
for sanity in the kitchen it was as well I did not ; for my request that my 
spinning friend might not be disturbed for window-cleaning caused evident signs 
of amusement. The spider K. L. mentions may have been disappointed with 
the position of his web for fly-catching. 
Hampstead. E. K. Hitchcock. 
My experience of spiders eating Iheir webs is not on so large a scale as that of 
the friends of your correspondent, K. L., but it may be of interest to record what 
I once saw of the framing of the web of the garden spider, Epcira diaiierna, 
apparently the same as the ope spoken of by K. L. 
When I began to watch, the spokes of the wheel were already up, and there 
were thin concentric lines at wide intervals. Where these crossed the radii there 
were small tufts of white flocculent material, and in the centre of the web was a 
larger tuft of the same ; and I .saw, as the spider span line after line of the more 
permanent web, using these first cross-lines merely as guides — that the little tufts 
at the crossings disappeared one by one as she passed them. At last, on reaching 
the middle, the spider was busy for a few seconds ; and then, where the tuft had 
