Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/141



nearly agrees in the thoracic pattern with the spider above described. Ausserer, in his elaborate paper on the Mygalides, lately published (Beiträge &c. vide supra), appears to have overlooked M. meridionalis (Costa) altogether; while Canestrini and Pavesi (Catal. degli Araneidi italiani in Atti Soc. Ital. Sc. Nat. xi. (1869), p. 25, include it under the synonyms of M. fodiens Walck., from which it is undoubtedly distinct, as may be seen at once, even if it were only by the difference in the form and structure of the lid with which the external orifice of the tubular nest is closed.

In the case of the upper door of these branched nests, as there is but a very thin coating of earth on their upper surface, it is rare to find any of the larger mosses or lichens growing upon them; but, as if to compensate for this deficiency, a variety of foreign materials are employed which are scarcely ever found in cork doors, such as dead leaves, bits of stick, roots, straw of grasses, &c., and I have even seen freshly-cut green leaves, apparently gathered for the purpose, spun into a door which had recently been constructed.

But here again there is the widest possible difference between nest and nest in the degree of perfection in their concealment; and, although as a rule the surface of the upper door harmonizes well with the general appearance of its surroundings, there are some individual nests in which it readily catches the eye and even attracts attention.

Thus, I have seen nests in mossy banks where the doors, being made of nothing but earth and silk, showed distinctly as brown patches against the green; and those doors which are covered with earth only, even when they are surrounded by earth, are often easily detected, because when they dry up, as they quickly do, they become much paler in colour than the earth of the bank, which retains its moisture.