The Bird Spider.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1216, 23 January 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Bird Spider.

Few animals are more repulsive than thi° gigantio spider. The bird spider {Myg<rh' avicularia), for so the creature is called, excites horror in all the oountries in which it is found. _

In the Antilles and in the forests of Venezuela, Brazil, Guiana, and Ecuador, its repulsive aspect has, among the lesidente, as well es among travellers, caused a terror that tVe imagination of the aborigines ba9 stiillnrthf ) exaggerated. How many times, while lyin*? in my hammock during the long eqainoctiai nights, -have I heard the Indians and peons, while equating around the camp fira in the virgin forest, tell eaoh other stories, or fables rather, whose inexhaustible theme was serpents, bats, and big spideis 1 In measure as the night advanced, the tales booame more and more extraordinary. From hecatombs of birds devoured upon their nesta by fche Araua cangrtjo (crab pyidei), with long velvety l«-gs and poisonous jawa, the orator pvw.d to mowdramatio facts, and the last fltekerings of the dying embers, often lent their fantastic ao companiment to a story about a child whon blood had been sucked while it lay in itcradle. Freed from these local exapKeratior.R, wbic 1 are so frequent among ihc-se weak minds in a state of nature (and examples of which mig^' be easily found nearer home), thn hittory o' the bird spider still remains sofiiu.«ntly inter esting to merit being narrated and be bettti known. Linne df scribed this specie? umltr tha nanuof Aranea avicularia, the specific name recalling the animal's habit of fet.-d.ug at timesnpon young birds, and even upan adult humming birds, captured upon the neat. The celt* brated entomologist Latreille in 1802 estab lished the genius Mygale for Araohnida of th* tribe Theraphoses. All the individuals inoluded in this group are hunterß, and liyt either in nests constructed in the earth or i> the clefts of stones and under the bark of trees, like the sppoies that forms the sufcjrct of this article. Some of them are wondt-r-fully skilled workmen, as the mason eyvhr (M. ccementarsa, Latr,), of southern Franc»and the pioneer spider (M.fodiem, Walck.) ot Corsica. The habits of the bird spider aTe not so well known as those of the ones jnst mentioned, either because from its hunting being done at night it is rarely met with, or be cause it selects retreata that are not very accessible. There are few authors to be found, however, who have correctly spoken of this curious and dreaded spider ; several of them have copied one another, and others have devoted themselves especially to its anatomy. During the course of my travels in equinootial America I have several times had an opportunity of seeing the bird spider in a state of nature, and it will perhaps be permitted me to add a few personal observations to those of the travellers who have preceded me.

Of the several hundreds of spider* that have been described, this is the largest. The largest specimen that I captured measured exactly, with legs stretched out, seven inches in diameter. The first one I saw was at Martinique, not far from Saint Pierre, in the trees skirting a road. Its nest was suspended from the branch of a Palicourea, an elegant shrub of the Rubiaceas, and its appearance strikingly recalled thone large caterpillar nests that we so frequently find upon the Aleppo pine (Pinus haUpensis) on the mountains in the vicinity of Cannes and Nice. It consisted of a beautif al white silken tissue, of several thick layers, strengthened by very strong threads capable of arresting a small bird. In the centre were placed the eggs, perhaps 1,500 or 2,000 in number. As soon as the young are hatched and escape from the cocoon, large red ants of the genus Myrmica wage a bloody war on them, and feast upon their whitish flesh of no consistency and without haira. Suoh destruction happily counterbalances the ravages that the spider would make were it to multiply too abundantly. In fact, the adult animal, whose body measures no less than 4J inohea in length, not including the legs, is as ferocious as its aspect implies. Ita entire body bristles with long reddish brown hairs. Ita eyes, eight in number, are strati gely grouped upon a email elevation (cephalothorax); six of them are arranged in a triangle on each side, and the two others are separate at the apex of the warty prominence. At the extremity of the strong, black, smooth jaws are the palpi, shaped like legs, and each terminating in an enormous black shining sting, which ia obliquely swollen like that of the scorpion, and, like that, filled with a dangerous venom. These are not its only weapons. At the extremity of its abdomen two elongated glands secrete an abundance of a lactescent, corrosive liquid, which the animal is capable of ejecting against its enemy at will, in order to blind it h render it insensible. Add to this a muscular power so great that it ia very difficult to make it let go, even when it has fastened itself to a smooth body, and vre shall obtain jome idea of the formidable manner in whioh

thi* species is armed. ' * It is rare that the bird spider is seen to hunt during the day-time, except near its nest, and principally in dark places ; but as Boon as night arrives, it leaves its lair. Its wonder, fal agility, a characteristic which it shares with its congeners, is coupled with rare boldness. It attacks large lizards, like the anolis of the Antilles, and likewise serpents, il is eaid. These it falls upon as quick asa flash, and seizes by the upper part of the neck, in order to prevent them fro as resisting. If it surprises a humming bird upon its eggs, it buries its terrible pincers into it between the baee of the skull and its first vertebra, injects therein a poison which paraljzes it, and then suoka the blood of ita viocim at leisure.— La Nature.