Page:Supplement to harvesting ants and trap-door spiders (IA supplementtoharv00mogg).pdf/63

 with the block of earth in which it lay, all the way from Visalia, a town about 350 miles south of San Francisco, where he had taken it; the nest and spider travelled safe to London enclosed in an empty cocoatina tin, 4-1/2 inches deep, and 2-3/4 across.

The nest was then entire, for these spiders appear to make singularly shallow tubes; and it might have remained so up to the present day had it not been for the rash curiosity of a chambermaid in the London hotel where Mr. Treadwell was staying, who, smitten with a great desire to learn what the heavy little box which came from the land of gold might contain, proceeded to examine the earth, when the sudden appearance of the spider frightened her so much that box and nest and all were thrown with a crash upon the floor.

Were it not for this unlucky incident I might have seen a complete specimen of this curious nest; but as it was, though the spider miraculously escaped uninjured, the bottom of the nest was pounded into dust, and only the upper portion remained intact.

Both this nest and that sent to me by M. Puls, were of the true cork type, and presented a solid door with a bevelled edge, fitting into the correspondingly bevelled lip of the tube, and shutting flush with the surface of the ground. The lining of the tube was strong and thick, but soft and silky to the touch.

The tube itself in Mr. Treadwell's specimen, when intact, cannot have measured more than 3-1/2 inches in length; and we learn from Dr. Lanzwert, who collected the other specimen, that the average length of these nests does not exceed three inches. Dr.