BLACK SPIDER FROM GREYTOWN

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23130, 20 September 1940, Page 10

BLACK SPIDER FROM GREYTOWN

LARGE AS HALF-CROWN

[THE PRESS Special Service.]

WELLINGTON, September 19. • A strange parcel was received in a Wellington newspaper office this week. It was a tin containing a coal-black spider, big as a half-crown, alive and annoyed, but definitely pleased to see somebody on 'whom he might vent his irritation at his tumbled journey through the post. Under separate cover there was a letter from Greytown, explaining that the finder of the spider had a number in his garden and was anxious to learn about its diet and habits. He said also that an insect from the same burrow was enclosed, but this was no longer so; the spider had lunched in transit. , , _ The spider was identified by the Dominion Museum entomologist, Mr J. T. Salmon, as Porrothele Antipodia, one of New Zealand’s largest spiders, and capable of giving a noxious bite when roused. This spider is common in parts of New Zealand, including Wellington. It builds a somewhat shapeless mesh web, centring round a tunnel of silk, often lining a natural hole or cranny, extending under log or stone, 'or lining a burrow in the ground. It lives omnivorously on whatever insects trample on the outskirts of its web, rushing out with great alacrity and seizing them.