Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/379

Rh had captured insects, and one had got a large drone-fly,which was still alive, and which after a long fight escaped. These spiders are hunters not web-spinners; but I was amused to observe that one which I took in my hand ran up to the highest point at once, and holding up the abdomen let a thread run out on the gentle breeze-the sun was shining and the thread was quite visibe—until it touched a twig about sixteen inches from my hand, he then let himself drop from my hand and ran up the thread to the twig; I thought tins mode of escape was adopted by spiders only as a dernier ressort. I had no means of carrying off one of these spiders. What becomes of them later in the summer? for as soon as the white blossoms are gone, his colour would be a great disadvantage.'

"I was unable to accept an invitation to see these spiders in situ, but two or three weeks later I received a further communication from Mi Nottidge 'On the 10th June,' he writes, 'at Petersfield, Hants, I found a white spider, very similar to, if not identical with, the one 1 described to you ; he was in the blossom of the wild guelder-rose. He differed from the one I found near Westwell in having reddish brown spots on the side of the abdomen, but they were not sufficiently distinct to interfere with the completeness of his disguise. There were many bushes of the mealy Viburnum close by, but the blossom was over. On the same day and in the same locality, I found a very similar spider on the blossom of Orchis maculata, but in this case the spots on the sides of the abdomen were large, of a dark red-brown colour, and very sharply defined; and when the spider stood in his usual position, with his head downwards, these spots very closely resembled in size, shape, relative position, and-at a yards distance-even m colour, the dark purple pollinia of the flowers. I found many specimens of the spider on Orchis maculata, one on each spike of blossom, but I searched in vain for one on the dwarf orchis (O. ustulata), although this is much like O. maculata, but its pollinia are not dark in colour. Can it be that as the season advances this spider changes colour and that by each successive change he is specially adapted to live concealed on the blossom of some special plant?'"

Mr. Dunning exhibited three living specimens of the spiders captured by Mr. Nottidge at Petersfield, on the guelder-rose and on Orchis maculata. Apparently they were all females of Thomisus citreus, a common species on flowers, the sexes of which are so dissimilar in size and colour that they have been described as distinct species.

Mr. Jenner Weir remarked that he had lately been observing the habits of the same species of spider in the New Forest, and that he had seen it sometimes station itself in the centre of a composite flower, with its legs expanded like the exterior rays of the flower, and sometimes in the flowers of orchids, with its legs extended horizontally. It appears to be able to destroy even the honey-bee, which he had found dead in its clutches.