Walckenaer has described a spider of large size, under the name of Olios Taprobanius, which is very common in Ceylon, and conspicuous from the fiery hue of the under surface, the remainder being covered with gray hair so short and fine that the body seems almost denuded.  It spins a moderate-sized web, hung vertically between two sets of strong lines, stretched one above the other athwart the pathways.  Some of the threads thus carried horizontally from tree to tree at a considerable height from the ground are so strong as to cause a painful check across the face when moving quickly against them; and more than once in riding I have had my hat lifted off my head by one of these cords.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Over the country generally are scattered species of Gasteracantha, remarkable for their firm shell-covered bodies, with projecting knobs arranged in pairs.  In habit these anomalous-looking Epeirdae appear to differ in no respect from the rest of the family, waylaying their prey in similar situations and in the same manner.

Another very singular subgenus, met with in Ceylon, is distinguished by the abdomen being dilated behind, and armed with two long spines, arching obliquely backwards.  These abnormal kinds are not so handsomely coloured as the smaller species of typical form.]

An officer in the East India Company’s Service[1], in a communication to the Asiatic Society of Bengal, describes the gigantic web of a black and red spider six inches in diameter, (his description of which, both in colour and size, seems to point to some species closely allied to the Olios Taprobanius,) which he saw near Monghyr on the Ganges; in this web “a bird was entangled, and the young spiders, eight in number, and entirely of a brick red colour, were feeding on the carcase."[2]

[Footnote 1:  Capt.  Sherwill.]

[Footnote 2:  Jour.  Asiat.  Soc.  Bengal, 1850, vol. xix. p. 475.]

The voracious Galeodes has not yet been noticed in Ceylon; but its carnivorous propensities are well known in those parts of Hindustan, where it is found, and where it lives upon crickets, coleoptera and other insects, as well as small lizards and birds.  This “tiger of the insect world,” as it has aptly been designated by a gentleman who was a witness to its ferocity[1], was seen to attack a young sparrow half grown, and seize it by the thigh, which it sawed through.  The “savage then caught the bird by the throat, and put an end to its sufferings by cutting off its head.”  “On another occasion,” says the same authority, “Dr. Baddeley confined one of these spiders under a glass wall-shade with two young musk-rats (Sorex Indicus), both of which it destroyed.”  It must be added, however, that neither in the instance of the bird, of the lizard, or the rats, did the galeodes devour its prey after killing it.

[Footnote 1:  Capt.  Hutton.  See a paper on the Galeodes vorae in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, vol. xi.  Part 11. p. 860.]