I Once, However, Saw In A Hothouse In
Shropshire A Large Female Wasp Caught In The Irregular Web
Of A Quite Small Spider; And This Spider, Instead Of Cutting
The Web, Most Perseveringly Continued To Entangle The Body,
And Especially The Wings, Of Its Prey.
The wasp at first aimed
in vain repeated thrusts with its sting at its little antagonist.
Pitying the wasp, after allowing it to struggle for more than
an hour, I killed it and put it back into the web.
The spider
soon returned; and an hour afterwards I was much surprised to
find it with its jaws buried in the orifice, through which the
sting is protruded by the living wasp. I drove the spider away
two or three times, but for the next twenty-four hours I
always found it again sucking at the same place. The spider
became much distended by the juices of its prey, which was
many times larger than itself.
I may here just mention, that I found, near St. Fe Bajada,
many large black spiders, with ruby-coloured marks on their
backs, having gregarious habits. The webs were placed
vertically, as is invariably the case with the genus Epeira:
they were separated from each other by a space of about
two feet, but were all attached to certain common lines,
which were of great length, and extended to all parts of
the community. In this manner the tops of some large bushes
were encompassed by the united nets. Azara [10] has described
a gregarious spider in Paraguay, which Walckanaer thinks
must be a Theridion, but probably it is an Epeira, and
perhaps even the same species with mine.
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