THE BIRD-CATCHING SPIDER.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2742, 8 February 1890, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE BIRD-CATCHING SPIDER.

Thk gigantic speoies of the typical genua Mygalo, in which tho body is covored with a rough, hairy coi»t, and the legs Are also stout and hairy, obiefly inhabit the warmer parts of America and the West Indian Island**. So far as the observation of naturalists -at present go, most of them, at any rate, do not burrow in the ground, but reside in the groove* and fissures of the bark of trees, in tho crevices between stones, and in other sheltered places, where they commonly spin a more or less tubular silkon dwelling of suitable size, within which the female also deposits hor eggs, enclosed in a regular caeb of white silk, to tho number, aocordingto some observers, of 1,800 or 2,000. The spiders usually go in pursuit of their prey in the evening and during tho darkoat of the uight, when they seize upon and destroy all the insects and other anthropods that they are able to surprise and overcome, whilst, according to stories which have cotno down to us from a tolerably distant past, they are not content with ineects alone, but even prey upon email birds and other vertebrates; we believe that the gigantic spiders which have been brought to our Zoological Gardens from South America have not been experimented on with birds ; but Mr Bartlett has informed us that one of them attacked and killed a mouso. At the eame time, it is very carious that the formidable falces of the large migalidse are regarded with so little dread by the Indian children in the Amazonian region, that Mr Bates actual found the latter on one occasion leading about one of these monsters bj a thread put round his middle. The specimens that havo been kept in the Regent's Park were fed chiofly upon cockroaches and meal worms ; ono that was kept some years ago in Danzig killed and devoured some young frogs and other amphibians. Several of the epecies exceed two inches and a half long, and their legs covor a surface of fivo inches in diamotor.—GassePs Natural History.