Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/191

 pots, partly filled with earth and covered with gauze, but I have never been able to detect the least inclination on the part of either of these spiders to excavate a burrow in the earth.

Thinking that I might have better success if I were to place the mother spiders, together with their young, in captivity, I captured a female N. meridionalis and N. Eleanora, each with its brood, and placed them on moist earth in flower-pots under gauze. The result, however, was that the young spiders concealed themselves in the crevices of the soil, while the mother spiders remained exposed.

The adult N. meridionalis lived thus for twenty days (from the 7th to the 27th of November), capturing and killing flies with which I supplied her, but she then suddenly died.

After seventeen days' captivity the other species (N. Eleanora) began to cover a small surface of the gauze with a semi-transparent substance (which resembled varnish rather than silk), secreted from its spinners, and four days later it began to weave a cell; this cell took twelve days to complete, and finally assumed the shape of a rudely-formed figure of 8, with a circular aperture at either end, each of which was kept open during the construction of the cell, and then closed. The gauze itself, covered with silk, formed the ceiling of the cell, while the floor was made of silk attached to the earth, and the sides of strong and rather opaque silk.

This cell bore no resemblance to any portion of any trap-*door nest that I have ever seen, and it is difficult to conceive how the idea of such a structure presented itself to the spider. Its outline indeed had some likeness to the general outline of the spider herself, one loop of the figure 8 being rather smaller than the other. The distance between the floor and the ceiling of this impromptu cell was a little over half an inch, its width varying from one inch in the broadest to eight lines in the narrowest part, while its length was an inch and a quarter.

It would appear that the object which the spider had in view was to construct a warm and secure retreat for the winter, and accordingly after having completed this chamber, she no longer