: At a meeting of the Entomological Society, July 20, 1855, a
paper was read by Mr. H.W. BATES, who stated that in 1849 at Cameta in
Brazil, he "was attracted by a curious movement of the large grayish
brown Mygale on the trunk of a vast tree: it was close beneath a deep
crevice or chink in the tree, across which this species weaves a dense
web, at one end open for its exit and entrance. In the present instance
the lower part of the web was broken, and two small finches were
entangled in its folds. The finch was about the size of the common
Siskin of Europe, and he judged the two to be male and female; one of
them was quite dead, but secured in the broken web; the other was under
the body of the spider, not quite dead, and was covered in parts with a
filthy liquor or saliva exuded by the monster. "The species of spider,"
Mr. Bates says, "I cannot name; it is wholly of a gray brown colour, and
clothed with coarse pile." "If the Mygales," he adds, "did not prey upon
vertebrated animals, I do not see how they could find sufficient
subsistence."--_The Zoologist_, vol. xiii. p. 480.]

For my own part, no instance came to my knowledge in Ceylon of a mygale
attacking a bird; but PERCIVAL, who wrote his account of the island in
1805, describes an enormous spider (possibly an Epeirid) thinly covered
with hair which "makes webs strong enough to entangle and hold even
small birds that form its usual food."[1]

[Footnote 1: PERCIVAL'S _Ceylon_, p. 313.]

The fact of its living on millepeds, blattae, and crickets, is
universally known; and a lady who lived at Marandahn, near Colombo, told
me that she had, on one occasion, seen a little house-lizard (_gecko_)
seized and devoured by one of these ugly spiders.

Walckenaer has described a spider of large size, under the name of _Olios
Taprobanius_, which is very common in Ceylon, and conspicuous from the
fiery hue of the under surface, the remainder being covered with gray
hair so short and fine that the body seems almost denuded. It spins a
moderate-sized web, hung vertically between two sets of strong lines,
stretched one above the other athwart the pathways. Some of the threads
thus carried horizontally from tree to tree at a considerable height
from the ground are so strong as to cause a painful check across the
face when moving quickly against them; and more than once in riding I
have had my hat lifted off my head by one of these cords.[1]

[Footnote 1: Over the country general