ly are scattered species of
_Gasteracantha_, remarkable for their firm shell-covered bodies, with
projecting knobs arranged in pairs. In habit these anomalous-looking
_Epeirdae_ appear to differ in no respect from the rest of the family,
waylaying their prey in similar situations and in the same manner.

Another very singular subgenus, met with in Ceylon, is distinguished by
the abdomen being dilated behind, and armed with two long spines,
arching obliquely backwards. These abnormal kinds are not so handsomely
coloured as the smaller species of typical form.]

An officer in the East India Company's Service[1], in a communication to
the Asiatic Society of Bengal, describes the gigantic web of a black and
red spider six inches in diameter, (his description of which, both in
colour and size, seems to point to some species closely allied to the
_Olios Taprobanius_,) which he saw near Monghyr on the Ganges; in this
web "a bird was entangled, and the young spiders, eight in number, and
entirely of a brick red colour, were feeding on the carcase."[2]

[Footnote 1: Capt. Sherwill.]

[Footnote 2: _Jour. Asiat. Soc. Bengal_, 1850, vol. xix. p. 475.]

The voracious _Galeodes_ has not yet been noticed in Ceylon; but its
carnivorous propensities are well known in those parts of Hindustan,
where it is found, and where it lives upon crickets, coleoptera and
other insects, as well as small lizards and birds. This "tiger of the
insect world," as it has aptly been designated by a gentleman who was a
witness to its ferocity[1], was seen to attack a young sparrow half
grown, and seize it by the thigh, _which it sawed through_. The "savage
then caught the bird by the throat, and put an end to its sufferings by
cutting off its head." "On another occasion," says the same authority,
"Dr. Baddeley confined one of these spiders under a glass wall-shade
with two young musk-rats (_Sorex Indicus_), both of which it destroyed."
It must be added, however, that neither in the instance of the bird, of
the lizard, or the rats, did the galeodes devour its prey after killing
it.

[Footnote 1: Capt. Hutton. See a paper on the _Galeodes vorae_ in the
_Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_, vol. xi. Part 11. p. 860.]

In the hills around Pusilawa, I have seen the haunts of a curious
species of long-legged spiders[1], popularly called "harvest-men," which
congregate in hollow trees and in holes in the banks by the roadside, in
groups of from fifty