Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/822

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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

is of a rich black color, with antenna claws of bright emerald-green. It is spread through most of Europe, and lives under cornices, in the cracks of walls, and clefts of rock. While spiders of every other type have eight eyes, these tubicolar species have only six, those which look backward being wanting. They would be of no use to an animal living in a hole which is closed at one end.

Fig. 12.—Bird-Eating Spider killing a Humming-Bird.

In the intertropical regions, especially in the Antilles, Guiana, and Brazil, there live enormous spiders which the European colonists call spider-crabs, and naturalists mygales. In them, suppleness and agility are united with muscular strength. Of all the representatives of the race which now engages our attention, the greatest physical power is exhibited in these. The mygales