Page:Supplement to harvesting ants and trap-door spiders (IA supplementtoharv00mogg).pdf/110

 But, as it is, the work of opening the door, snatching in an ant, and closing it again, is but the affair of a second or two, and before the companions of the victim have time to realize the nature of the phenomenon, the gaping earth has closed again and become once more, to all appearance, part of the solid and trustworthy ground.

I have seen N. Manderstjernæ snatch at insects in this way during the daytime, and I well remember how I started on one occasion when, as I was looking fixedly at a small blue gnat which I had taken for a moth, I saw the earth suddenly open and one of these spiders partly emerge, make a swift stroke at the insect, and withdraw again as swiftly.

I have found the remains of ants, of beetles of many species and different sizes, of wood-lice (Oniscus), and of earwigs (Forficula) in the nests of N. Eleanora and N. Manderstjernæ, and the wings of a large green field-bug in the nest of the former. I have only once detected traces of food in the dwellings of ''Cteniza Moggridgii'', and these consisted of minute fragments of the integuments of insects, none of which were certainly recognisable, though I believe that they partly consisted of the coats of a small species of ant. The rarity or complete absence of the wings of insects which habitually fly rather than crawl on the ground, and my inability to discover either snares or any evidence that these spiders ever leave the nest, lead me to believe that they live (at any rate from October to May) by dragging into their nests any insects which approach within reach.

Ants, earwigs, beetles, and wood-lice are precisely the very creatures which would fall a prey to the