Experiments with Spiders. 
235 
consisting of a ball of blackened wax, of a little gray feather, 
and of a ball of black and white paper. As he made these 
things move about they were noticed, pursued, and in some 
cases were seized by the spiders, just as in the case of the true 
fly. Without doubt the spiders were to some extent deceived 
by the artificial insects. They did not necessarily take them 
for flies, but they probably hoped to find in them something 
edible. But this, after all, does not argue that their vision is 
very poor, since, in nature, they must be constantly meeting 
with new forms of life upon which they may prey. Spiders eat 
a great variety of things—caterpillars, beetles, bugs, walking- 
sticks, and, in fact, all manner of insects, as well as other 
spiders. 
M. Plateau gives an example of very hasty reasoning in his 
remarks upon H. F. Hutchinson’s statement that he has seen a 
jumping spider, Epiblemum scenicum, pursuing its own reflec¬ 
tion in a mirror. 9 He says that it would be difficult to imagine 
an experiment which would more fully prove that spiders dis¬ 
tinguish form very badly, seeing movements rather than any¬ 
thing else. 10 Does he then suppose that the spider mistook 
his reflection for some insect which would serve him as prey? 
Such an hypothesis is quite uncalled for, and is, indeed, unten¬ 
able. We once owned a very intelligent dog that on several 
occasions nearly knocked down a large pier-glass by rushing at 
his own reflection and attempting to fight it. He became furious 
whenever he entered.the room; and one of our boys, when two years 
and four months old, used to search eagerly behind the glass for 
the little boy that he saw in it, and it was several days before he 
gave up trying to find him. Mr. Hutchinson’s spider, like the 
dog and the boy, mistook his reflection for another spider, 
may be that he wished to catch it and eat it, as is commonly 
done among spiders, even of the same species; or very prob¬ 
ably, if it was in the mating season, he saw, in his reflection, 
a rival male, and was trying to give battle. 
We find, by reference to some notes made in 1887, that when 
9 Nature, Vol. XX, 1879, p. 581. 
10 Recherches Experimentales sur la Vision chez les Arthropodes 
deuxieme partie, p. 10. 
