Page:Supplement to harvesting ants and trap-door spiders (IA supplementtoharv00mogg).pdf/68

 only in an inverted position, for they really hung downwards from the under side of the net.

These eggs were greyish white or pale brown, and varied in shape from globose to oblong.

All were very small, the largest only measuring 1/2 line in its greatest length, but it is doubtful whether any of these eggs were fertile, and, though they appeared full and plump, many presented an irregular and fissured surface.

A fortnight later (July 27) another cluster of eggs was laid, and this time between the hours of five and eight When the lamp was brought in at the latter hour, I perceived what I took to be a drop of water hanging from the gauze cover above and rather in front of the spider's door, the very position occupied by the cluster of eggs previously described. On closer inspection this proved to be a drop of a pellucid colourless liquid, in which some thirty eggs floated. One egg was laid on the gauze at some distance from the main group, and several were also attached to the inside of the tin box.

At midnight I found that the drop had coagulated and contracted, and by the following morning the mass was quite dry and resembled the former group, only that it was not quite so convex.

Some of the eggs forming this cluster were much larger than any in the preceding one, and one measured as much as a line in length by half a line in breadth. This group is shown magnified at fig. B, 8, Plate XV., and some of the separate eggs more highly magnified at fig. B, 9.

Between this date and the end of November when the spider died, eggs were laid on seven distinct occa