Page:Supplement to harvesting ants and trap-door spiders (IA supplementtoharv00mogg).pdf/67

 It is curious to find that, far as California is removed from the Riviera, the same habits of construction and self-defence are common to the spiders of both countries, and that the bond of kinship sets time and space at defiance.

I kept this spider all through the summer and early autumn at Richmond (Surrey), sprinkling the nest from time to time with water, and constantly supplying its inhabitant with flies, woodlice, grasshoppers, earwigs, and other similar dainties. She did not, however, seem eager for food, and the insects provided for her, and actually placed within the nest, were often turned out again almost untouched.

When I placed living insects, such as grasshoppers, for example, within the nest over-night, she would often allow them to remain there unharmed, so that I found them ready to escape on opening the door the following morning.

I never saw her leave the nest of her own free will, and when I made her come out and set her to run in the garden, she began at once to seek for a place to hide in, hobbling along in an ungainly way and at a slow pace.

She must, however, have left the nest on more than one occasion, unseen by me, for she deposited several clusters of eggs at various times upon the under-surface of the gauze net which was fastened over the mouth of the box in which she was imprisoned.

The first of these groups of eggs was laid during the night between the 12th and 13th of July, and formed a raspberry-shaped cluster attached to the gauze.

I have represented this cluster of the natural size at fig. B, 6, and magnified at fig. B, 7, on Plate XV.,