who first gave popular currency to this story was Madame MERIAN,
a zoological artist of the last century, many of whose drawings are
still preserved in the Museums of St. Petersburg, Holland, and England.
In a work on the Insects of Surinam, published in 1705[1], she figured
the _Mygale aricularia_, in the act of devouring a humming-bird. The
accuracy of her statement has since been impugned[2] by a correspondent
of the Zoological Society of London, on the ground that the mygale makes
no net, but lives in recesses, to which no humming-bird would resort;
and hence, the writer somewhat illogically declares, that he
"disbelieves the existence of any bird-catching spider."

[Footnote 1: _Dissertatio de Generatione et Metamorphosibus Insectorum
Surinamensium_, Amst. 1701. Fol.]

[Footnote 2: By Mr. MACLEAY in a paper communicated to the Zoological
Society of London, _Proc._ 1834, p. 12.]

Some years later, however, the same writer felt it incumbent on him to
qualify this hasty conclusion[1], in consequence of having seen at
Sydney an enormous spider, the _Epeira diadema_, in the act of sucking
the juices of a bird (the _Zosterops dorsalis_ of Vigors and Horsfield),
which, it had caught in the meshes of its geometrical net. This
circumstance, however, did not in his opinion affect the case of the
_Mygale_; and even as regards the _Epeira_, Mr. MacLeay, who witnessed
the occurrence, was inclined to believe the instance to be accidental
and exceptional; "an exception indeed so rare, that no other person had
ever witnessed the fact."

[Footnote 1: See _Ann. and Mag. of Nat. Hist._ for 1842, vol. viii. p.
324.]

Subsequent observation has, however, served to sustain the story of
Madame Merian.[1] Baron Walckenaer and Latreille both corroborated it by
other authorities; and M. Moreau da Jonnes, who studied the habits of
the Mygale in Martinique, says it hunts far and wide in search of its
prey, conceals itself beneath leaves for the purpose of surprising them,
and climbs the branches of trees to devour the young of the
humming-bird, and of the _Certhia flaveola_. As to its mode of attack,
M. Jonnes says that when it throws itself on its victim it clings to it
by the double hooks of its tarsi, and strives to reach the back of the
head, to insert its jaws between the skull and the vertebrae.[2]

[Footnote 1: See authorities quoted by Mr. SHUCKARD in the _Ann. and
Mag. of Nat. Hist._ 1842, vol. viii. p. 436, &c.]

[Footnote 2