The construction of this silken dwelling is exclusively designed for the domestic luxury of the spider; it serves no purpose in trapping or securing prey, and no external disturbance of the web tempts the creature to sally out to surprise an intruder, as the epeira and its congeners would.
By day it remains concealed in its den, whence it issues at night to feed on larvæ and worms, devouring cockroaches and their pupæ, and attacking the millepeds, gryllotalpæ, and other fleshy insects.
Mr. EDGAR L. LAYARD has described[4662] an encounter between a Mygale and a cockroach, which he witnessed in the madua of a temple at Alittane, between Anarajapoora and Dambool. When about a yard apart, each discerned the other and stood still, the spider with his legs slightly bent and his body raised, the cockroach confronting him and directing his antennæ with a restless undulation towards his enemy. The spider, by stealthy movements, approached to within a few inches and paused, both parties eyeing each other intently; then suddenly a rush, a scuffle, and both fell to the ground, when the blatta's wings closed, the spider seized it under the throat with his claws, and dragged it into a corner, when the action of his jaws was distinctly audible. Next morning Mr. Layard found that the soft parts of the body had been eaten, nothing but the head, thorax, and clytra remaining.
But, in addition to minor and ignoble prey, the Mygale rests under the imputation of seizing small birds and feasting on their blood. The author who first gave popular currency to this story was Madame MERIAN, a zoological artist of the last century, many of whose drawings are still preserved in the Museums of St. Petersburg, Holland, and England. In a work on the Insects of Surinam, published in 1705[4671], she figured the Mygale aricularia, in the act of devouring a humming-bird. The accuracy of her statement has since been impugned[4672] by a correspondent of the Zoological Society of London, on the ground that the mygale makes no net, but lives in recesses, to which no humming-bird would resort; and hence, the writer somewhat illogically declares, that he "disbelieves the existence of any bird-catching spider."
Some years later, however, the same writer felt it incumbent on him to qualify this hasty conclusion[4681], in consequence of having seen at Sydney an enormous spider, the Epeira diadema, in the act of sucking the juices of a bird (the Zosterops dorsalis of Vigors and Horsfield), which, it had caught in the meshes of its geometrical net. This circumstance, however, did not in his opinion affect the case of the Mygale; and even as regards the Epeira, Mr. MacLeay, who witnessed the occurrence, was inclined to believe the instance to be accidental and exceptional; "an exception indeed so rare, that no other person had ever witnessed the fact."
Subsequent observation has, however, served to sustain the story of Madame Merian.[4682] Baron Walckenær and Latreille both corroborated it by other authorities; and M. Moreau da Jonnès, who studied the habits of the Mygale in Martinique, says it hunts far and wide in search of its prey, conceals itself beneath leaves for the purpose of surprising them, and climbs the branches of trees to devour the young of the humming-bird, and of the Certhia flaveola. As to its mode of attack, M. Jonnès says that when it throws itself on its victim it clings to it by the double hooks of its tarsi, and strives to reach the back of the head, to insert its jaws between the skull and the vertebræ.[4683]
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."[4691]
The fact of its living on millepeds, blattæ, 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.