COMMON INDIAN SPIDERS. 
1047 
to the nest where it is devouied. Tlic nests consequently come to be filled 
with the dried remains of various insects and often afford a useful clue to the 
entomology of the locality, including night flying forms such as readily escape 
notice by day. Further references to the habits of this species, as well as to 
the different kinds of silk used to give these webs their special characteristics 
wilt be found in Rec. Ind. Mus. XI, 1915, pp. 534-536, pi. XXV. 
Some of the Dictynidae, another cribellate family, also spin their webs 
among foliage, but live in them singly. 
The Psechridae include certain large spiders \idth long slender legs which are 
abmidant in damp junglps such as those on the lower slopes of the Darjeeling 
Hills and the Western Ghats. They spin a somewhat irregular sheet-like 
web which extends forward from a tubular lair. When lying in wait for their 
prey the spiders rest upside down on the under side of their sheets. 
The Uloboridae. alone among the Cribellatae, spin circular snares construct- 
ed on a definite geometrical plan with regular radii, like the webs characteristic 
of the Argiopidae among the Ecribellatae. Several small species are commonly 
foimd in association with the webs of other spiders. A somewhat larger one, 
Uloborus geniculatus, frequents outhouses, etc., where it spins a web with a very 
charactei'istic lace-like centre ; and yet others spin two horizontal webs, one 
above the other, the upper one flat and of moderately fine mesh and the lower 
one funnel-shaped and of much more open mesh. 
The majority of spiders with circular snares belong, however, to the family 
Argiopidae, which comprises a large number of species of very varied appearance. 
The habits of several Indian species are carefully recorded in Kingston’s fasci- 
nating book “ A Naturalist in Himalaya ”. 
The genus Tetragnatha includes most of the spiders with long slender bodies 
and strongly divaricate slender jaws, which spin webs among vegetation around 
water, but leave them empty by day while they sit on a neighbouring 
twig or blade of grass, coming out into them at dusk. Other species 
live among bushes in the jungle, and one at least of these, T. gracilis, often 
spins its web with the twig on which it rests extending right across the centre. 
The genus E«cta (fig. 4), also very abundant near water, differs from Tetragnatha 
only in having the abdomen produced beyond the spinnerettes into a pointed 
tail. To the same subfamily belongs Leucauge { = Argyroepeira), a genus of common 
diurnal spiders, whose striking black niarkings, vHth or without orange or green 
on a background of metallic silver, render many of the species exceptionally 
h andsome. 
The next subfamily contains the giant Nephila, whose immense web 
of strong yellow silk is a striking feature of all damp jungles during the 
rains, when it reaches maturity, its term of life being confined apparently to 
a single year. The legs of a full grown female have a span of about six inches, 
the body attaining a length of about two inches and a thickness of about three 
quarters of an inch. The great disparity between the sizes of the two sexes 
which is noticeable in many spiders, is illustrated in an extreme form in this 
genus (see fig. 5), the males being relatively insignificant slender little spiders 
of a reddish brown colour, of which one or more is commonly to be found 
residing among the outer whorls of the web of the female. 
The genus Argiope, which gives its name to the whole famih% includes the 
familiar spider with abdomen transversely banded in dark brown and pale yel- 
low, that sits with its legs stretched out in pairs over a “ St. Andrew’s cross ” 
(not always complete however) of opaque white silk, vvdth which its web is deco- 
rated. Males of this species are also relatively minute and liv’e in small webs 
on the borders of the web of the female : they are of a uniform brownish colour. 
Very young specimens decorate the centre of their webs with lace-like silk not 
unlike that found at the centre of the web of Uloborus genicidatua (see above). 
29 
