Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/163

 be fastened down with a pin, a second door will be found next day by the side of the former one. No doubt spiders not unfrequently find their doors blocked up by a fall of earth, and are thus obliged either to make a new opening or to prolong the old tube.

I once fastened open the surface doors of three of the double-door nests by passing a thread through the silk of the door and tying it back to some twigs above. The doors were thus turned backwards, and the aperture of the tubes, which lay in a vertical terrace wall, exposed to view.

Next day, after a night of very heavy rain, I found the doors as I had left them, but in one nest the lip of the tube had been dragged inwards so as partially to close the tube; in the second nothing appeared to have been done, but in the third nest a new covering had been very cleverly extemporized out of three fallen olive-leaves, which were loosely spun together and attached by one or two threads to the margin of the tube. This formed an admirable concealment, but did not move freely as a door, the web being too imperfect. Two days later, however, it was completed and had become a perfect door, moving on a hinge just within and below that of the former door, which still remained as I had fastened it. The other nests remained in the same condition as before, only that a little moss had been dragged into the mouth of the tube of the nest, which had been partially closed with its own lip.

The extreme reluctance which these spiders show to abandon their dwellings is curiously exemplified by what follows.