Page:Supplement to harvesting ants and trap-door spiders (IA supplementtoharv00mogg).pdf/73

 it with silk or furnishing it with a door, I replaced her in her own nest.

Within a few days after this date I found her dead at the bottom of her tube, and at first I was inclined to fear that the treatment to which she had lately been subjected might have caused her end. When, however, I detected the brown spot on the side of the abdomen, described above, and which so strongly recalled the marks frequently observable in caterpillars attacked by ichneumons, I came to the conclusion that she had really died from the internal injuries caused by the gnawing of these cruel parasites; and that the eggs, laid long before by one of these insects, had been hatched within her body and developed into larvæ, which, living upon her tissues, had at length destroyed some vital part. It is surprising that a creature, carrying within itself such a fatal brood, should not only live, but be capable of under-*going such adventures and misadventures as this travelled spider endured with seeming indifference; but similar facts are familiar to all those who have attended to the rearing of caterpillars, and the frequent disappointment caused by the death of apparently sound specimens which have been attacked in this way is but too well known.

It would appear that Cteniza Californica is peculiarly amenable to captivity, and indeed to captivity of the strictest kind.

My specimen lived during all the time she was in my possession in a cocoatina tin, a cylindrical box 4-1/2 in. deep and 2-3/4 in. in diameter, which always stood among the books and papers on my writing