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Show 1883.] MR. H. O. FORBES ON A SPIDER FROM SUMATRA. 587 plucked the leaf by the petiole while so cogitating, and looked at it half listlessly for some moments, mentally remarking how closely that other Spider had copied nature, when, to m y delighted surprise, I discovered I had actually secured a second specimen, but the imitation was so exquisite that I really did not perceive how matters stood for some moments. The Spider never moved while I was plucking or twirling the leaf, and it was only when I placed the tip of m y little finger on it, that I observed that it was a Spider, when it, without any displacement of itself, flashed its falces into m y flesh. The first specimen I got was in W . Java, while hunting one day for Lepidoptera. I observed a specimen of one of the Hesperidae sitting, as is often a custom of theirs, on the excreta of a bird on a leaf; I crept near it, intending to examine what they find in what one is inclined to consider incongruous food for a Butterfly. I approached nearer and nearer, and at last caught it between my fingers, when I found that it had as I thought become glued by its feet to the mass ; but on pulling gently the Spider to m y amazement disclosed itself by letting go its hold ; only then did I discover that I was not looking on a veritable bird's excreta. Though I preserved the interesting specimens, both Butterfly and Spider, carefully labelled them, attaching to them these notes, and sent them home, to m y surprise no interest was awakened in the specimen, and I heard nothing of it, nor can I trace its subsequent history. Allow m e here to digress for a moment to animadvert in the strongest possible way on the habit of too many purchasers, collectors (not field collectors) and describers of collections, who, having acquired numbered specimens, take not the slightest care to record, when cataloguing or describing the species gathered in a locality, the number on the specimen. I have with the extremest care (a habit I owe to the example of our lamented Prosector when we used to hunt weekly together in the Scotch hills) labelled every single specimen I have collected, and entered it with m y field-notes in m y journal; but of all the thousand specimens sent home, I can trace no more perhaps than a score. I a m informed by m y agent that " no one cares a fig for the history or the number attached to a specimen ; it is the specimen alone they care for, and no one will agree or promise either to retain or record the number." Surely the acquirers of collections owe by an unwritten law to the field-worker this amount of recompense for the toil and often risk at which they have been obtained,-to assist him in identifying his specimens with his notes, and to add to the store of knowledge on the habits of the species, which in nearly all groups is so very scanty. The present specimen was sent home some year and half ago, and turned up recently, having been unrecognized as anything of interest. I regret that the leaf on which it posed has gone astray; but the figure (Plate LI.) accurately represents the position assumed on it by the Arachnid. The Spider is in general colour white, spotted here and there with black; on the underside its rather irregularly shaped and prominent abdomen is almost all white, of a pure chalk white ; the angles of the legs are, however, shining jet-black. The Spider does |
