Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/103

 PART II.

TRAP-DOOR SPIDERS.

It is now one hundred and sixteen years since Patrick Browne gave an illustration in his Civil and Natural History of Jamaica of the nest of a trap-door spider, the first record of the kind with which I am acquainted. Seven years later the careful observations of the Abbé Sauvages appeared, in which he gave a very good description of the nests of the "araignée maçonne" (Nemesia cæmentaria), which he discovered near Montpellier, likening them to little rabbit burrows lined with silk and closed by a tightly-fitting moveable door. In 1778 and 1794 Rossi published an interesting account of the nest and habits of a trap-door spider which he had observed in Corsica and near Pisa; and from that time up to the present day the curious dwellings of these creatures, many species of which have been discovered in warm climates, have continued to attract the attention of naturalists.

Very little, however, has been added to our knowledge of the life-history of these remarkable archi-*