Though, as we have seen, there are some spiders which eat birds, and others which eat lizards, yet both these interesting things take place abroad. Here, however, in England, it would seem that we have a spider which eats worms, catching them at the end of a long woven bag which descends into the earth, and into which the worm somehow manages to get. How it does so, however, is not at all clear, since the bag, which is sometimes a foot long, is described as having no opening at either end, the spider living enclosed in it, apparently a permanent prisoner. Still a sac like this would seem as difficult of entry for flies as for worms, and the spider, which is three-quarters of an inch in length, and armed with very large mandibles, or falces—to use the approved word—must, it is plain, live on something. As a matter of fact, it was living on a worm when found by Mr. Brown, who gives the following account of the matter. “On drawing out one of the sacs,” he says, “I observed a worm at the lower end, partially within the sac and partially outside, and it was evident that the spider had been eating a considerable portion of its anterior extremity.” One would have thought that a careful examination of the way in which the worm had got into the sac would have thrown light on the problem, but of this we hear nothing more. When taken out of the ground the sac was limp and flaccid, but afterwards the spider inflated it, and it was then seen to have some minute valves—“openings,” that is to say, “protected or covered by a little valve or door.” They were not, however, to be detected in every nest—possibly on account of their very small size. That the object of these valvular openings is to admit air seems obvious, for spiders breathe through lungs and require a good supply of oxygen. It was now concluded, both by Mr. Brown and Mr. Newman—a well-known entomologist—that this particular spider lived on worms and resided permanently in a long subterranean sac or bag, which it had the power of inflating with air. A different view, however, was propounded by Mr. Meade—an authority on spiders—who suggested that the worm had only got into the sac by accident, and that the spider, like other subterranean nest-makers, probably came out at night and fed abroad, returning to rest at home during the daytime. To do this it would, indeed, have to unweave one end of its sac—probably the upper one—and then do it up again, but there was no reason, in Mr. Meade’s opinion, why it should not act in this way. To me, however, it seems unlikely that the minute valves, made with such care, should be destroyed in this manner and made afresh every day; and moreover, when Mr. Brown looked again at the sac, in order to test this theory, he could find no evidence of its having been dealt with in this Penelopean manner. There were no traces of fresh silk. The evidence, therefore, seems to be more in favour of _Attipus sulzeri_—for that is its name—being a genuine worm-eating spider.