Page:Supplement to harvesting ants and trap-door spiders (IA supplementtoharv00mogg).pdf/106

 which had a blackish hue, owing to the presence of the filaments of what I believe to have been some undeveloped fungoid growth. The mouth of the tube was open, and frequently surmounted by a short tubular prolongation, commencing at the surface of the ground, which formed a sort of chimney about an inch high and from an inch to an inch and a quarter across; this was composed of fibres of plants, pine-needles, and especially of a large branching lichen, very common in the neighbourhood of the nests, and all these materials were woven together and kept in place by a few threads of silk spun here and there.

It was not every nest that was furnished with a chimney, nor were all the chimneys equally complete, for in some cases they consisted merely of a small rim or one-sided lip, while in others they resembled little birds' nests, and were sufficiently firm and compact to permit of my carrying them away. It appeared to me that these chimneys served as screens to prevent the loose sand from being swept into the burrows by the winds which rage over that open sea-*shore plain, and that they were more or less complete in proportion as the exposure was greater or less, and the sand looser or more bound together.

I captured eight of these spiders, and here, as in the trap-door group, the female alone inhabited the nest.

Besides this habit, they have other points in common with trap-door spiders; such, for example, as the resemblance which exists between this nest and that of Theraphosa Blondii from Brazil (see p. 188, above), and between the chimney of this Tarantula