Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/153



to whom has been before made, and of whose kind exertions some acknowledgment is thus permanently recorded.

In fig. A, Plate XII., the upper door, which, if closed, would be entirely hidden by the long filmy mosses which surround and cover it, is represented open; but it should be clearly understood that this is artificial and not natural, as in reality these doors close of their own accord by means of their weight and the elasticity of the hinge. It will be seen that living mosses of two kinds are worked into the upper surface of this door, which was admirably concealed. (fig. A 1, Plate XII.).

It is chiefly in the absence of the branch and the different form of the lower door that the nest of Nemesia Eleanora differs from that of N. meridionalis; and, as they inhabit the same localities, it is only when one has dug down as far as the lower door that it can be known to which of the two species the nest belongs. When once this point is reached however, all doubt is at an end; for in this case the unbranched double-door nest differs from the branched in a way which any child could realize, though the respective spiders are not very dissimilar when seen with the naked eye alone. This affords a good instance of the benefit which may accrue to a collector from a study of the habits of the creatures which he collects, for it is certain that it was the nest in this case which first proclaimed the distinctness of its tenant.

Nemesia Eleanora is rather less common at Mentone than N. meridionalis, but at Cannes I found the reverse to be the case. At the latter place, on the northern slope of the little hill of St. Cassien, branched