Page:Supplement to harvesting ants and trap-door spiders (IA supplementtoharv00mogg).pdf/115

 however, though the spider appeared in perfect health.

Neither this spider nor the true N. cæmentaria of Montpellier appears to have any idea of digging a hole when placed on soft earth if they are adult; and the same thing is true of N. Manderstjernæ and N. Eleanora, but the young of all these spiders readily excavate nests for themselves.

I have once seen a nearly full grown, and probably adult, Cteniza Moggridgii make a perfect tube and furnish it with a moveable door in a single night when confined under gauze on moist earth, but this is the only instance (except that of Cteniza Californica, recorded above) in which I have known an adult trap-door spider excavate or attempt to do so.

These Ctenizas seem to be peculiarly able to adapt themselves to circumstances, for two young ones, which I sent by post to M. Lucas at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris in little wide-mouthed, cylindrical, blue glass bottles, not only lined the bottles with silk but also closed them at the mouth with a door fitting accurately into a bevelled lip, in the manufacture of both of which fragments of moss, the only material at their disposal, were used in place of earth. It is curious to see how quickly the young trap-door spiders, both of the cork and wafer kinds, when taken from the nest of the mother, will make their own perfect little dwellings in captivity, and I have known them construct tube and door within fifteen hours.