Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/847

Rh she crushes and holds while they crowd around and take lessons in what is to be their life business.

In a pleasant home in New Jersey, already mentioned, have been made some most interesting observations in spider ways by Mrs. Mary Treat. Her studies were mostly among the tarantulas, whose habit is to excavate underground residences, and to Mrs. Treat belongs the honor of discovering two new species. First is the tiger tarantula, named from the tigerish stripes of the legs, who lives in a burrow several inches deep, with a mysterious private room at the entrance, and a door skillfully designed, and covered with rubbish to look like the ground about it.

Of this family, Mrs. Treat had about thirty under observation when August came, and with it the spider's worst foe—the digger wasp. In her book Home Studies in Nature, is an exceedingly interesting account of the precautions of the wary spider and the persistence of the wasp.

Most of the spiders, wise enough to know their conqueror when they saw her, hermetically closed their doors when the raid began, and tried to remain behind their bolts and bars until the danger was over; but as it was two or three weeks before all the wasp babies were provided for, many a venturesome hermit grew hungry, opened the door a-crack, and cautiously peeped out. Alas! the caution was too late. So lively and so sharp in the hunt was the enemy, that scarcely one of these imprudent ones escaped the terrible fate of burial alive. Out of all Mrs. Treat's family only five remained to open their doors and enjoy life after the wasp war was over. This is entirely the rage of motherhood. At no other time in the year does the wasp molest the spider.

This tiger spider, in spite of her formidable name, is an exception to the customs of the family, in having a spouse as big as herself, who constructs a home, and lives as comfortably as she. In general the female spider only is a respectable member of society, the male being often a vagrant and living no one knows how, besides being undoubtedly the original of the "little husband no bigger than my thumb" in the old nursery rhyme.

The tarantula family, to which belong our New Jersey friends, is the most celebrated as well as the most maligned of the race, although most of the stories have been proved to be myths, and their accomplishments in the building line have brought them into favorable notice. America has its own specimens of the tarantula, one of which, perhaps the largest yet discovered, was found in South Carolina by Prof. Holmes, on his own plantation, and was sent with nest and young to the Museum of Natural History in Central Park, New York. This truly fearful arachnid had a body larger than a mouse and covered with hair, as well as