[Footnote 1:  See Ann. and Mag. of Nat.  Hist. for 1842, vol. viii. p. 324.]

Subsequent observation has, however, served to sustain the story of Madame Merian.[1] Baron Walckenaer and Latreille both corroborated it by other authorities; and M. Moreau da Jonnes, 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. Jonnes 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 vertebrae.[2]

[Footnote 1:  See authorities quoted by Mr. SHUCKARD in the Ann. and Mag. of Nat.  Hist. 1842, vol. viii. p. 436, &c.]

[Footnote 2:  At a meeting of the Entomological Society, July 20, 1855, a paper was read by Mr. H.W.  BATES, who stated that in 1849 at Cameta in Brazil, he “was attracted by a curious movement of the large grayish brown Mygale on the trunk of a vast tree:  it was close beneath a deep crevice or chink in the tree, across which this species weaves a dense web, at one end open for its exit and entrance.  In the present instance the lower part of the web was broken, and two small finches were entangled in its folds.  The finch was about the size of the common Siskin of Europe, and he judged the two to be male and female; one of them was quite dead, but secured in the broken web; the other was under the body of the spider, not quite dead, and was covered in parts with a filthy liquor or saliva exuded by the monster.  “The species of spider,” Mr. Bates says, “I cannot name; it is wholly of a gray brown colour, and clothed with coarse pile.”  “If the Mygales,” he adds, “did not prey upon vertebrated animals, I do not see how they could find sufficient subsistence.”—­The Zoologist, vol. xiii. p. 480.]

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."[1]

[Footnote 1:  PERCIVAL’S Ceylon, p. 313.]

The fact of its living on millepeds, blattae, 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.