If, however, in spite of these artifices, its dwelling should be discovered, the spider, ascending to the mouth of the tube, pulls upon the lid so as to prevent, if possible, its being raised. Mr. Moggridge, who made a study of trap-door spiders, and has written a work upon them, says: “No sooner had I gently touched the door with the point of a penknife than it was drawn slowly downwards with a movement which reminded me of the tightening of a limpet on a sea-rock, so that the crown, which at first projected a little way above, finally lay a little below the surface of the soil. I then contrived to raise the door very gradually, despite the strenuous efforts of the occupant, till at length I was just able to see into the nest and to distinguish the spider holding on to the door with all her might, lying back downwards, with her fangs and all her claws driven into the silk lining of the under surface of the door. The body of the spider was placed across, and filled up the tube, the head being away from the hinge, and she obtained an additional purchase in this way by blocking up the entrance.” When a trap-door spider uses its claws like this to pull down the lid of its tube, they make little holes all round the edge of the inside of the lid. They can be seen, if one looks, quite plainly, and look as if the points of little pins had been stuck into the smooth surface of the web.
Some trap-door spiders are of a large size, and when they lift up the lids of their tunnels, and look cautiously out, they have quite a formidable appearance. During the night, they leave their home, and hunt about for insects of various kinds. As soon as they have caught one they carry it into their dens and devour it there at their leisure. The Rev. Mr. Wood gives an amusing description of this spider’s actions. “New-comers,” he says, “into the country which the trap-door spider inhabits, are often surprised by seeing the ground open, a little lid lifted up, and a rather formidable spider peer about as if to reconnoitre the position before leaving its fortress. At the least movement on the part of the spectator, back pops the spider, like the cuckoo on a clock, clapping its little door after it quite as smartly as the wooden bird, and, in most cases, succeeds in evading the search of the astonished observer, the soil being apparently unbroken, without a trace of the curious little door that had been so quickly shut.”
Some tropical spiders are of very great size, so that, in Brazil, children sometimes tie one end of a piece of string round their waist, and lead them about as if they were dogs. This does not mean, of course, that they are quite so big as dogs—even little ones—but the legs of a very huge mygale, as these monsters are called, might have a spread as big as a man’s hand, and the body would be then, perhaps, not so very much smaller than a mouse’s. That the webs made by such immense spiders as these should be strong enough to hold a small bird, and that, when caught, the bird should be eaten as flies are by spiders here at home, does not seem so very remarkable—in fact, it is just what one might reasonably expect.
Curious Pets.
Brazilian children tie one end of a piece of string round the waist of Mygales and lead them about as if they were dogs.
But naturalists, for the most part, are a very unimaginative, sceptical set of men, with whom not to believe a thing, if it is, in the smallest degree, striking or picturesque, is a sort of virtue, in which they hug themselves as long as they can. Accordingly, when Madame Merian and Palisot de Beauvois told them that these large spiders really did eat birds, they all set their faces against it, and were determined not to credit an account derived from the reports of natives, who, of all people in the world, were thought the least likely to know anything about the animals which lived in their own country. It is strange how this idea—or some other one which comes to practically the same thing—prevails. It is as strong to-day as ever, yet in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, what the natives say turns out to be true. At last some European happens to see, once, what they have seen and known all their lives. Then, perhaps, the natives are believed, but only, as it were, in the wake of the one European, who gets more credit for finding they were right than they do for having always told the truth. The one European, in this instance, was Mr. H. W. Bates, who, in his well-known work The Naturalist on the River Amazon, gives the following account of what he saw: “At Cameta I chanced to verify a fact relating to the habits of a large hairy spider of the genus Mygale, in a manner worth recording. The species was M. avicularia, or one very closely allied to it. The individual was nearly two inches in length of body, but the legs expanded seven inches, and the entire body and legs were covered with coarse grey and reddish hairs. I was attracted by a movement of the monster, on a tree-trunk; it was close beneath a deep crevice in the tree, across which was stretched a dense, white web. The lower part of the web was broken, and two small birds—finches—were entangled in the pieces; they were about the size of the English siskin, and I judged the two to be male and female. One of them was quite dead, the other lay under the body of the spider, not quite dead, and was smeared with the filthy liquor or saliva, exuded by the monster. I drove away the spider and took the birds, but the second one soon died.”
Several spiders have taken to a more or less aquatic life. One of these—the raft-spider—makes, as its name implies, a sort of raft of dry leaves, sticks, etc., which it fastens together by means of its web, and then launches itself on the water, where it is blown about as the wind listeth. When an aquatic insect comes to the surface of the stream, or when a moth or fly falls into it, the spider runs along the water, and seizes it, after which it returns to its raft; or it will run down the stems of the water-plants, and seize what it finds clinging to them, returning with them, or when it requires a fresh supply of air, as before. If threatened with any danger it crawls underneath its raft, and there remains until all is safe again.
Still more ingenious are the façons d’agir of the water-spider, which weaves a nest like a diving-bell against some sub-aquatic plant, and fills it with air from above, by carrying down bubbles that cling to the hairs of its body. It used to be thought that this air had exuded from the stems of the plant itself, and so filled the nest affixed to them, but the naturalist Bell, so long ago as 1856, proved that this was not the case, and that the spider brings down its own air, by experiments, of which he gave the following interesting accounts:—
“No. 1. Placed in an upright cylindrical vessel of water, in which was a rootless plant of Stratiotes, on the afternoon of November 14th. By the morning it had constructed a very perfect oval cell, filled with air, about the size of an acorn, on this it has remained stationary up to the present time.