Page:Supplement to harvesting ants and trap-door spiders (IA supplementtoharv00mogg).pdf/90

 passed the greater part of that period on the surface of the earth in a silk tube ending in an oblong enlargement, utterly unlike her normal habitation. Finally, when I had done the digging for her, she furnished the cylindrical hole I had bored in the earth with a silk lining, and made it secure with her own two typical doors.

The figure-of-8 cell which she constructed at first, and subsequently modified until it became the oblong enlargement of the tube alluded to above, was totally unlike any form of trap-door spider's nest known to me; but in its ultimate shape (which resembled that of the glass part of a thermometer with an oblong bulb, save that it was curved and not straight), I think we may trace some resemblance to the silk tube which is made by Atypus, and of which a figure is given at A, Plate XIII., p. 183; the mouth of the tube made by my captive was, however, open. It is curious, also, when we recall this resemblance, to note that Mr. Brown has recorded, in his observations alluded to above (p. 185), that the tube of one of the nests of Atypus, which he brought home in a collapsed state, showed a somewhat similar tendency to become distended. For, on opening the box in which they had been carried, he perceived a movement throughout the tube as if it were becoming inflated, and though this inflation appeared to subside shortly after, yet the following morning the tube had recovered its cylindrical shape. I am tempted to believe, though this is mere conjecture, that the box in which these tubes were put contained moisture, and that their apparent inflation was due to the same hygrometric action