Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/174

 are led to suppose that a door of the cork type is always associated with a simple tube, in which there is no trace of a second door or valve, so that, judging of the unknown by the known, we conclude that nests which possess the characteristic peculiarity of a true cork door are true cork nests in other respects also. Further research may possibly show that there are exceptions to this generalization, but I do not at present know of any.

I have seen Australian specimens of large trap-doors, of the cork type, measuring from one to two inches across. In some of these the doors were scarcely more than semicircular but very thick, and having their edges bevelled so as to correspond with the sloping margin of the tube; in others, found at Paramatta, and described to me by Lady Parker as being tenanted by a black spider, the doors were said to be circular and much smaller, scarcely larger than a sixpence, and of the cork type.

The upper portion of a nest from New Granada has been figured and described by M. Victor Audouin, which closely resembles that drawn at Fig. A in Plate VII., p. 88, but the door is about a third larger.

I have also been assured that nests of the cork type are found in many parts of India, and we have seen above that they are reported to be common in the island of Formosa.

Putting all this together, it will be seen that nests of this type are found all round the globe; in Formosa, India, Syria, the Grecian Archipelago, Italy