Chapter 4

[142]Mr. Pickard-Cambridge's description will be found at p. 292, below. In its characters this female spider (the male is unknown) most nearly resemblesN. cæmentaria, but differs, among other points, in markings and in having one or more spines on the genual joint of leg, these spines being almost always absent in the same joint incæmentaria. The nests of the two species are totally unlike.

The hedge-banks near Hyères, and also about the railway station of the same name, which is some 4 miles from the town itself, are frequently tenanted by this spider. During a short stay there in May, 1873, I secured a large number of specimens, and verified the structure of the nest by a careful examination of thirty-eight examples. The nest is invariably branched and furnished with a lower door, but the branch is of variable length, usually short, and never, as far as I could detect, quite reaches the surface. In some cases this branch was so short that it could scarcely contain the spider, and, under these circumstances, it is not easy to conceive any other use for it than that of retaining the lower door when not in use. It may, however, enable the spider to take up a rather better position when engaged, as she frequently is if disturbed, in keeping the main tube closed by pressing the lower door upwards with her feet, for then her head points downwards, and her abdomen rests in the branch.

Plate XVIII.

I have seen her in this attitude on several occasions when I had cut out a block of earth similar to that figured in the plate. The lower door is quite unlike that of either of the other two double-door wafer nests, being wedge-shaped, tapering from below upwards to the hinge, which is always placed at the point of bifurcation of the tubes, and having two crowns separated from each other by the gusset-like web of silk which connects the door on either side with the lining of the main tube, one of these crowns fitting into and closing the main tube, while the other fits into the aperture of the branch.

The wedge-shaped structure of the door is seen in its most exaggerated form in the nests of the younger spiders (figs. B, B 1,Plate XVIII), and becomes less so in the older and larger ones (figs. A 1, A 2). I have even seen some of these lower doors, evidently made by old spiders, which were so much flattened as to bear a considerable resemblance to that ofN. Eleanora.

The main tube of the nest is from 10 to 12 inches long, and usually enters the earth almost horizontally, bending downwards from the point at which the branch joins it, and where the lower door is hung. This causes the lower door to lie nearly horizontally when not in use, and its lower crown probably serves, by fitting into the aperture of the branch, to sustain it in this position and prevent it from falling forward. The point of bifurcation is placed, as a rule, much nearer to the entrance of the nest, than it is in the two other branched nests, and occurs usually within two inches of the surface of the earth; so close is it indeed that, on lifting the upper door and looking in, one may frequently see the lower door move across and close the passage down the main tube, pushed by the spider from below. This frequently enabled me to secure the spider without having to follow her to the bottom of the nest; and, when fortune favoured me, I secured a block of earth by one rapid sweep ofthe knife (a common table-knife), which furnished me at once with a good specimen of the nest and of its occupant.

When the spider has once fairly determined upon resistance, it is scarcely possible to make her retreat without destroying the nest, and, in one case, when I tried to push the lower door down from above, while she was pressing it upwards from below, I found that, without crushing my opponent, I could not succeed.

There were probably young in the nest on this occasion, for I have frequently found them in the nests with the mother at this season. In no case did I even catch a glimpse of the male, and this sex is at present unknown.

The young spiders make their nests at an early age, and there can be no doubt thatN. congenerenlarges its dwelling from time to time as growth demands, just as the trap-door spiders at Mentone do. Indeed in one of these new Hyères nests I found, outside the main tube and some way above the existing lower door, a former and disused lower door much smaller than the one then in use, and which had evidently belonged to the nest at a previous stage of its development. I have observed this before in the nests both ofN. ManderstjernæandN. Eleanora.

This new type is strictly intermediate between the double-door unbranched wafer nest constructed byN. Eleanora, and the double-door branched wafer with the descending cavity which I am now about to describe.

This latter nest, the work ofN. Manderstjernæ,Auss.143(formerly calledN. meridionalis), has already been partially made known by the figures and description given of it inAnts and Spiders(Plates IX., X., and XI., pp. 98, 100, and 104); but I have to confess, with great regret, that when these illustrations and descriptions were published, I was not fully acquainted with the true structure of this nest, having overlooked the existence of a short descending cavity which leaves the main tube a little above and on the opposite side to the ascending branch. This cavity is always present, but the very largest and oldest spiders usually allow it to become filled up with remains of food and particles of earth, and sometimes even spin silk across its entrance, in which case it can only be traced on very close examination.

[143]This spider was described by Mr. Pickard-Cambridge at p. 101 inAnts and Spiders, under the name ofN. meridionalis, Costa. This name has now to be abandoned for reasons given in full by Mr. Cambridge at p. 283, below. It would appear that a spider discovered by M. Simon in Corsica corresponds more closely with theN. meridionalisof Costa than our spider of the Riviera does. Moreover, sinceAnts and Spiderswas written I have had the good fortune to obtain at Mentone four male examples of our supposedmeridionalis, and these prove to possess the same characters as those assigned by Prof. Ausserer to a male spider which was captured at Nice, and named by himN. Manderstjernæ. This specimen is now in the possession of Dr. L. Koch, to whom I am much indebted for having kindly entrusted it to me for examination. This enabled Mr. Pickard-Cambridge to assure himself of the specific identity of hisN. meridionaliswithN. Manderstjernæ, which latter name it must for the future bear.

It was from an old nest such as this, in which the descending cavity had been closed up, that the large drawing at fig. A on Plate IX ofAnts and Spiderswas made, and this figure, therefore, still remains substantially correct.

But in the case of the other illustrations—namely, fig. B, Plate IX, fig. A, Plate X, and figs. B and B 1, Plate XI, where nests of young spiders, or of spiderswhich, though adult, have not attained the maximum size, are represented, this descending cavity, though overlooked by me, should have been shown, for it must certainly have existed.

Its presence was first observed by the Honourable L. G. Dillon, who detected it when tracing the course of the main tube upwards from below. I had always followed the tube from above downwards, and in so doing must have unwittingly filled up the descending cavity (the existence of which I was far from suspecting) with detached particles of earth.

I will own that, when Mr. Dillon first showed me this new feature, I hoped that it might prove to be something accidental and exceptional; and it was only after careful examination of a large series of nests of all sizes, that I gradually and almost unwillingly admitted that this descending cavity formed an important feature in the typical structure of the nests.

I now see, however, that the presence of this cavity adds considerably to the interest of the structure as a whole, and places its architect quite at the head of all the builders of trap-door nests. This type should now be called, for the sake of distinction, thedouble-door, branched, cavity, wafernest, to avoid confusion with theHyères branched nest.

I am now about to endeavour to atone for my past oversight by giving new illustrations (Plate XIX, figs. A and B) and descriptions of this very remarkable nest; while I would at the same time beg the indulgence of my readers for past and present shortcomings, reminding them that the interest which attaches to structures of this kind is proportioned to the complexity and subtlety of their contrivance, and, therefore, to the difficulty we experience in properly understanding and describing them.

Plate XIX.

It will be seen by a reference toPlate XIX,144figs. A and A 1, that in addition to the cylindrical branch, which mounts upwards, there is a shorter branch which leaves the main tube on the opposite side (on the left as seen in the Plate), and takes a downward course. Now this descending branch, which is barely more than an inch in length, is a cavity of variable form, being sometimes cylindrical, and sometimes egg- or even watch-shaped,145but there is one particular in which it never varies, and that is the position of its elliptic orifice. This orifice is always situated on the opposite side of the main tube to that on which the ascending branch leaves this latter, so that the whole nest, when seen in section, presents the figure of a St. Andrew's cross, only with arms of unequal length.

[144]A nest of a scarcely half-grown spider is here represented in order that sufficient space might be gained to show the lower door in its two positions. The perfect cavity is still found in nests of much larger dimensions, and occasionally, indeed, in nests of almost the maximum size.

[145]I take the liberty of coining a word to replace "lenticular," the form of a watch being more familiar than that of a lens.

But the most remarkable point is that, when the lower door is pushed across so as to close the main tube (as shown in fig. A,Plate XIX), it will invariably be found to lie in such a position that its lower extremity exactly meets the lower lip of the orifice of the descending cavity, when it will be seen that the semi-cylindrical surface of the lower door then coincides with, and appears to continue and form part of, the lower wall of the descending cavityon the one side, and of the corresponding wall of the main tube on the other. When the upper portion of the main tube is thus united to the cavity the two combine to form what appears like a short, independent unbranched nest.

Now, if we fancy ourselves an insect entering the nest in search either of the spider, her eggs, or young, I think it is plain that, when the lower door is in this position (fig. A), we should probably walk straight down to the bottom of the cavity, expecting to find our prey there, and should then return by the way we came, impressed with the belief that we had explored the whole nest, the secret of the lower door remaining undiscovered.

Whether this imaginary case may, or may not, represent what really takes place, is of course mere conjecture; but the constant occurrence of this beautiful adaptation of the various parts to one another, surely points to the conclusion that this is no mere coincidence, but rather a subtle contrivance having some very definite use and meaning.

We must admit, however, that it is difficult to conceive why, if this structure is of such great utility, it should be abandoned by the oldest and largest spiders.

Among the possible answers to this question I think that one of the more probable is that this arrangement may have been specially devised for protection against some enemy which the aged spiders have ceased to fear.

Indeed it is not unlikely that these aged spiders may have come to a time of life when they no longer lay eggs, and so do not need to keep up all thedefences which they employed when they had families to protect.

Since my attention was drawn to the existence of this cavity in the dwellings ofN. ManderstjernæI have never noted the presence of young in those nests in which the cavity was filled up and disused; but then I have only exact records with reference to this point in the case of seven nests.

In these seven nests, however, there was no free cavity, and there were no young spiders, though it was at the season when it was common to find young in the nests.

The question, therefore, remains open, and further observations on this head would be very acceptable. I detected thedébrisof insects, and especially the horny coats of ants, in the descending cavity, in many nests; and in some of the oldest, where it had become completely blocked up, these remains still indicated its former outlines and position.

The nests ofN. Manderstjernæat Cannes correspond both in respect of the cavity and of their other characteristics with those at Mentone.N. Manderstjernæoccurs pretty abundantly at San Remo in the olive-grounds east of the Sanctuary, but I can say nothing as to whether the nests there possessed the cavity or not, for, when I was there, I was not aware of its existence. I obtained a single example ofN. Manderstjernæand its nest at Hyères, and this is the westernmost point at which this species has as yet been detected.

We have now passed in review all the seven known types of true trap-door nest, and have taken note also of the lower and more rudimentary forms of nest,such as that ofAtypus, and the funnel nest ofCyrtauchenius elongatus, neither of which is furnished with a door.

Among the true trap-door nests, those of the cork type stand in a measure alone, being distinguished from all the others by their solid surface doors, composed of many layers of silk and earth; and we do not at present know of any intermediate forms linking the cork and wafer types together. But among the various nests which represent the wafer type the case is different, for here the types naturally fall into a progressive series, such as that represented in the diagrams (Pl. XIV, p. 193).

If we try to picture to ourselves the stages through which the most complicated wafer nest—namely, that of thedouble-door, branched, cavitytype (Diagram G 1) may have passed in the course of its development from a simpler ancestral form, we shouldà prioriexpect to find precisely such structures as theHyères double-door branchednest (Diagram F), and thesingle-door branchednest (Diagram D) forming successive halting-places in the advance from the primitivesingle-door, unbranchednest (Diagram C).

Thedouble-door unbranchedtype may in like manner find its prototype in the same original single-door unbranched nest (C), which we may look upon as the parent idea, from which all these structures have been derived.

Bearing this in mind, and remembering that kinship between living creatures is not only revealed to us by likeness in structure and colour, but also by similarity in habits and instincts, it becomes of interest to trace any resemblance that may exist betweenthese wafer-nests and the dwellings constructed byLycosa narbonensis, a species belonging to the allied family ofLycosidæ, and which closely resembles the truetarantula146of Southern Italy.

[146]In the United States, and indeed in the New World generally, it seems to be the custom to call all the larger "ground spiders," and especially the trap-door spiders, Tarantulas, but these, in fact, form a distinct group by themselves, belonging to the familyLycosidæ.

I first made the acquaintance ofLycosa narbonensisnear the glass-works west of Cannes, where this spider may not rarely be found living in tubular burrows in sandy clearings among the pine woods along the shore (Pinus pinea, the stone pine).

I have already (Ants and Spiders, p. 146), alluded to an account given by M. Léon Dufour of his observations on the nest and habits of the true tarantula (Lycosa tarentula), which he discovered in Spain.

The nests ofL. narbonensisat Cannes resembled those described by M. Dufour, but the cylindrical, subterranean burrows were apparently shorter. It was extremely difficult to trace their course, on account of the loose sand which poured into the tubes and choked them up, and I only succeeded in doing so completely in one case, when I stuffed the tube with cotton-wool before proceeding to dig. Here the open tube, which was quite simple, and about 1 inch in diameter, descended vertically for 31/4inches, and was then suddenly bent so as to become horizontal, terminating shortly afterwards in a triangular chamber, the floor of which measured 2 inches across at the widest part, and was strewed with the remains of beetles and other insects.

The nest was lined throughout with coarse silk,which had a blackish hue, owing to the presence of the filaments of what I believe to have been some undeveloped fungoid growth. The mouth of the tube was open, and frequently surmounted by a short tubular prolongation, commencing at the surface of the ground, which formed a sort of chimney about an inch high and from an inch to an inch and a quarter across; this was composed of fibres of plants, pine-needles, and especially of a large branching lichen, very common in the neighbourhood of the nests, and all these materials were woven together and kept in place by a few threads of silk spun here and there.

It was not every nest that was furnished with a chimney, nor were all the chimneys equally complete, for in some cases they consisted merely of a small rim or one-sided lip, while in others they resembled little birds' nests, and were sufficiently firm and compact to permit of my carrying them away. It appeared to me that these chimneys served as screens to prevent the loose sand from being swept into the burrows by the winds which rage over that open seashore plain, and that they were more or less complete in proportion as the exposure was greater or less, and the sand looser or more bound together.

I captured eight of these spiders, and here, as in the trap-door group, the female alone inhabited the nest.

Besides this habit, they have other points in common with trap-door spiders; such, for example, as the resemblance which exists between this nest and that ofTheraphosa Blondiifrom Brazil (see p. 188, above), and between the chimney of this Tarantulaand the aërial prolongation of the tube sometimes found in nests of the wafer type.

But perhaps the most suggestive point of resemblance consists in the habit which this Tarantula possesses of covering and closing the aperture of the nest during the winter with a thin layer of materials, similar to those of which the chimney is composed, and, like them, bound together with silk. This is, in fact, an immovable wafer-door, and precisely resembles those which I have seen constructed byNemesia Manderstjernæ, andN. Eleanora, when captive and placed in an artificial hole in the earth.

The tubes are, as has been already stated, open during the spring, and we may suppose that the spider, on the approach of warm weather, wakes up from her winter lethargy, and tears away this concealing thatch. But if one of these spiders should by chance happen to free this silk-woven thatch by cutting round some three-fourths of its circumference, so as to leave it still attached to the rim of the aperture of the nest by the remaining quarter, she would then have made for herself a veritable, though rather rude trap-door of the wafer kind.

It is most likely, however, that the spider knows what she is about and that a door to her dwelling would be the reverse of an advantage to her, for she is more powerful and swifter than the generality of European trap-door spiders, and, as she probably lives by leaping out upon and hunting her prey, she no doubt needs to have the entrance to her nest free of all encumbrance.

I am indebted to the Rev. W. G. Brackenridge for evidence of the very interesting fact thatLycosa narbonensiscloses her nest at Cannes in the winter.

I was aware that Latreille stated that the Tarantula possessed this habit,147and I was anxious to know whether the species which I had detected at Cannes, inhabiting as it did open nests in the month of May, would also exhibit this curious custom. Being unable to visit Cannes myself during the winter, I applied to Mr. Brackenridge, who, on the 28th of January last (1874), secured a very perfect specimen of the aërial portion or chimney of one of the nests having the orifice closed in the way above described, and most kindly transmitted it to me.

[147]P. A. Latreille, Mem. Soc. Hist. Nat., Paris (an. VII. de la République), p. 124: "L'araignéetarentuleferme aussi son habitation, mais cet opercule n'est pas mobile, et n'est construit que pour l'hiver."

I have, on a very few occasions, found the doors of a wafer or cork nest spun up during the winter at Mentone, and on digging have discovered the spider alive, though partially torpid, inside; but this is quite an exceptional event. I should much like to know, however, whether this becomes the rule in the case of the nests of those trap-door spiders which inhabit climates less favoured than that of Mentone.

In my concluding remarks inAnts and SpidersI called attention to the importance which attaches to a knowledge of the food and manner of feeding of any creature whose life-history we may wish to study, and I would now once more press the subject on the attention of my readers. For the range and distribution of a species largely depends upon the nature of its food, and this will also be an indication of the rivals with which it has to compete inthe struggle for existence; the times and seasons of its activity, and in many cases even the structure and position of its dwelling-place will be governed by this same all-important question of food-supply.

I have now detected the remains of insects, and of ants especially, in the nest of every species of trap-door spider which I have examinedin situ; very frequently, however, one may open several nests in succession without finding any of thesedébris, and at other times they will only be detected beneath the existing bottom of the tube, layers of silk having been spun over successive layers of refuse.

The horny coats of ants form by very far the largest proportion of these remains, and I have lately been much struck by the number of instances in which, while digging out ants' nests at Mentone, I have found trap-door nests (especially those ofN. ManderstjernæandN. Moggridgii) in their midst, the tubes often traversing the very heart of the ants' colony and coming into close contact with the galleries and chambers of the ants. The doors in these instances had almost always escaped my notice, and, indeed, they so closely resembled the surface of the ground that even when I knew, from having accidentally cut across the tube below ground, that one of these doors must lie near a given spot, yet I could only discover it by following the passage from below upwards. This perfect concealment is doubtless of essential importance to the spiders' success in life, for, if they once alarmed the whole colony of ants and let them know the exact whereabouts of their lurking-place, they would soon learn to avoid it.

But, as it is, the work of opening the door, snatching in an ant, and closing it again, is but the affair of a second or two, and before the companions of the victim have time to realize the nature of the phenomenon, the gaping earth has closed again and become once more, to all appearance, part of the solid and trustworthy ground.

I have seenN. Manderstjernæsnatch at insects in this way during the daytime, and I well remember how I started on one occasion when, as I was looking fixedly at a small blue gnat which I had taken for a moth, I saw the earth suddenly open and one of these spiders partly emerge, make a swift stroke at the insect, and withdraw again as swiftly.

I have found the remains of ants, of beetles of many species and different sizes, of wood-lice (Oniscus), and of earwigs (Forficula) in the nests ofN. EleanoraandN. Manderstjernæ, and the wings of a large green field-bug in the nest of the former. I have only once detected traces of food in the dwellings ofCteniza Moggridgii, and these consisted of minute fragments of the integuments of insects, none of which were certainly recognisable, though I believe that they partly consisted of the coats of a small species of ant. The rarity or complete absence of the wings of insects which habitually fly rather than crawl on the ground, and my inability to discover either snares or any evidence that these spiders ever leave the nest, lead me to believe that they live (at any rate from October to May) by dragging into their nests any insects which approach within reach.

Ants, earwigs, beetles, and wood-lice are precisely the very creatures which would fall a prey to thespider without obliging her to leave her nest, and it is accordingly their remains that we find.

On one occasion, however, at Montpellier, my sister detectedN. cæmentariain the act of devouring a fair-sized caterpillar, to obtain which there is some reason to think she must have left her nest. We were out together on the 8th of May last (1874), hunting for the new wafer nests of that district, under the kind guidance of M. Lichtenstein, when my sister called our attention to a caterpillar, the body of which partly projected from the tube of a cork nest (N. cæmentaria), and prevented the lid from closing.

On closer examination we found that the spider was in the act of devouring the caterpillar, and had already sucked out the juices from the anterior portion, while the middle and posterior parts of the body still resisted, and the legs clung tenaciously to the lip of the nest.

M. Lichtenstein told us that this larva, which when entire must have been rather more than an inch long, was that of the mullein moth (Cucullia verbasci).

It was not full grown, and as there were no mullein plants within some two feet of the nest and this caterpillar will not leave the plant on which it feeds unless compelled, it would seem as if the spider must have gone afield in order to capture it. It is possible, nevertheless, that the caterpillar may have fallen within reach of the spider when blown off the mullein leaves by the wind.

I have, unfortunately, but few details to give of the nocturnal habits of the trap-door spiders. It would appear, however, that they are more active by night than by day, and that it is more common to findtheir doors ajar at night, with the spiders posted on the look-out at the narrow opening. This is borne out by my observations on captive spiders, to which I shall allude shortly.

When at Hyères on the 11th of May, 1873, the evening being very warm and a bright moon shining, I went at 8:30P.M.with my father and sister to see what the spiders would be doing on a hedge bank where we had previously marked five cork and eight wafer nests. The moonlight did not fall upon this spot, but I was provided with a lantern, and by its light the nests at first appeared to be tightly closed, but we soon perceived first one and then another with the door slightly raised, ready to close on the smallest alarm, whether from a footfall or from the flickering of the lamp. When the light of the lantern was steady it did not appear to frighten the spiders in the least, even when brought to within a few inches of the door,148and this enabled me to watch them very closely. On either side of the raised door of one of the wafer nests I could see the feet of the spider projecting, and just at that moment I caught sight of a beetle close at hand, feeding on the topmost spray of some small plant below. Using every precaution, I contrived to gather the spray without shaking off the beetle, and gradually pushed it nearer and nearer to the nest. When it almost touched the lip of the nest the door flew open, and the spider snatched at the beetle and dragged it down below.

[148]This had been observed before both by my father and Mr. Dillon when watching the trap-door spiders at night at Mentone.

For a few seconds the door remained tightly closed,and then, to our great surprise, was suddenly opened again, and the beetle was cast alive and unharmed out of the nest. I immediately secured the insect, which proved to be the commonChrysomela Banksii.149

[149]I am indebted to Mr. F. Smith for the name.

I cannot doubt that this beetle was distasteful in some way to the spider, for it was neither so large nor so powerful as many beetles the remains of which I have found in the spiders' nests, and, besides, it did not escape from the nest, but was distinctly rejected by its captor.

This shows that this spider does not know instinctively what insects to reject and what to take.

This little episode was scarcely ended when I espied a wood-louse (Oniscus) walking down the bank, not far from another of these wafer nests. By a little guidance I managed so to turn its course that this unsuspicious crustacean went straight to the very point I wished, and made as if it would walk over the spider's door; but no sooner was it well within reach than, quick as thought, the spider clutched it and dragged it in. No rejection followed on this capture, and, though I could not actually witness the conclusion of this adventure, I do not doubt that it ended in a tragedy and a supper.

In these two cases, as in all those previously noted, the spiders did not leave the nest nor allow the door to close behind them, but kept it propped up on the abdomen and hindmost pair of legs. In this way the act of seizing their prey, and that of withdrawing into the nest, were almost simultaneous.

In no case did we see any of these spiders out oftheir nests, and their behaviour by night appeared to be the same as by day, only that they were bolder and more on the alert.

The spiders in the cork nests (N. Moggridgii) resisted our attempts to raise their doors just as rigorously as in the daytime.

All the spiders which I have kept in captivity have shown themselves more active at night than during the day, and I imagine that experience has taught them that fewer of their enemies are then abroad, while ants, beetles, wood-lice, and other creatures upon which they prey are quite as nocturnal as themselves.

I brought back to England some young cork and wafer spiders from Hyères, and one adult cork (N. Moggridgii). The latter was placed in a small tin box, with moss and a little earth at the bottom, on the evening of May the 10th, 1873, and by next morning she had made a silk tube through the moss, carrying up earth from below for the purpose of strengthening its walls on the outside. On the 13th of May the tube was furnished with a perfect door.

I hoped that this spider might lay eggs in her prison,150and therefore broke up her nest from time to time after my return to London in order to search for them. Between the 27th of May (when her nest had been transferred into a box of earth) and the 6th of October I destroyed her dwelling four times, and after each demolition she furnished the cylindrical hole which I bored for her with a lid, having thus made five doors since her capture. I got no eggshowever, though the spider appeared in perfect health.

[150]Strange to say, though I have opened so many nests at different seasons of the year, and found young apparently quite recently hatched, I have never been able to find the eggs of a trap-door spider.

Neither this spider nor the trueN. cæmentariaof Montpellier appears to have any idea of digging a hole when placed on soft earth if they are adult; and the same thing is true ofN. ManderstjernæandN. Eleanora, but the young of all these spiders readily excavate nests for themselves.

I have once seen a nearly full grown, and probably adult,Cteniza Moggridgiimake a perfect tube and furnish it with a moveable door in a single night when confined under gauze on moist earth, but this is the only instance (except that ofCteniza Californica, recorded above) in which I have known an adult trap-door spider excavate or attempt to do so.

TheseCtenizasseem to be peculiarly able to adapt themselves to circumstances, for two young ones, which I sent by post to M. Lucas at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris in little wide-mouthed, cylindrical, blue glass bottles, not only lined the bottles with silk but also closed them at the mouth with a door fitting accurately into a bevelled lip, in the manufacture of both of which fragments of moss, the only material at their disposal, were used in place of earth.151It is curious to see how quickly the young trap-door spiders, both of the cork and wafer kinds, when taken from the nest of the mother, will make their own perfect little dwellings in captivity, and I have known them construct tube and door within fifteen hours.

[151]M. H. Lucas, inBull. des Séances de la Soc. Entom. de Fr.No. 27 (1874), p. 101.

I have watched the proceedings of the young spiders, when taken from the mother's nest, in the following species:Nemesia Manderstjernæ,N. Eleanora,N. congener, andN. Moggridgii, the three first constructing wafer, and the last a cork nest. All of these very young spiders will excavate their own tubes and bring out pellets of the earth, which closely resemble those carried out from their galleries by the ants.

As has been stated before, the young brood, while still in the mother's nest, will often comprise individuals of different sizes, and though the majority are no larger than the baby-spider represented at Fig. B 2, Pl. IX,Ants and Spiders, some may occasionally be found that are fully twice as large.

The little nests which they make in captivity vary accordingly in size. Thus, out of sixteen young taken from the mother's nest (N. Eleanora), eleven, three days after capture, had made nests in the earth of a flower-pot, and the wafer doors of six of these nests measured 2 lines across, of four 21/2lines, and of one 3 lines. The first nests of another similar lot of youngEleanoraspiders had wafer doors measuring respectively 2, 21/2, 21/2, 3 and 3 lines. In another case when I captured fourteen young (the entire brood found in the nest of the mother,N. Manderstjernæ), after the lapse of five days every one of them had made a nest, but these were smaller and more uniform, ten of the wafer doors measuring 2 lines across, one 11/2, and one 21/2.

These little spiders need to be kept constantly supplied with flies, which should be killed and placed near their nests; they are often so greedy that they willattempt to drag a house-fly entire down their tubes for which it is much too large, when the door is pushed open, and the fly remains sticking in the entrance to the nest with its legs up in the air. One may even feed these spiders oneself by approaching carefully and, without causing any vibration, pushing the fly, placed on the end of a pencil, within reach of the spider.

I have given my reasons before (Ants and Spiders, p. 127) for believing that the trap-door spiders do not as a rule desert their nests, but enlarge them from time to time to meet their own requirements of growth; showing, by a comparison of the measurements of the doors of eight nests in April with those of the same nests in the following October, that all had increased in size.

Subsequent observations have confirmed this; I find that the young spiders taken from the mother's nest enlarge their nests in captivity in a precisely similar way.

Thus, for example, the wafer doors of three youngEleanoraspiders, made within a few days after their removal from the mother's nest on February 20th, 1873, and first measured on February 28th, had increased between that date and Nov. 29th following from 2 to 4 lines, 21/2to 4 lines, and 21/2to 6 lines respectively.

It is unfortunate that the male and female spiders are undistinguishable when very young, as it would be interesting to know whether the males construct nests before they take to their adult life, during which they roam from place to place and hide under stones.

In one case fourteen young spiders, forming this entire family taken with a femaleN. Manderstjernæ,made nests; so that unless all of these were females, we have evidence here to prove that the males do commence life by building nests for themselves.

I kept the maleCteniza Moggridgii, for ten days on damp earth in captivity, but he made no attempt to excavate or spin, and wandered restlessly about, scarcely touching the flies152with which I supplied him.

[152]I habitually fed my captive spiders with common house-flies, and it was curious to see how entirely the latter were wanting in any instinctive fear of even the largest spiders. They would creep between the spiders' legs, causing them to start as if electrified, and frequently it was not until the flies, after repeating this annoyance several times, actually walked up to and almost touched the fangs of the spider, that they were punished for their ignorance and presumption.

Seeing this I could not venture to prolong his captivity, as I feared to risk injuring a specimen which was quite unique and which there was little likelihood of my being able to replace. It is rather curious that M. Simon should also have found one male, and one only, of the closely-relatedCt. fodiensof Corsica, and that his specimen should be, like mine, the only one known.

Bearing in mind the curious problems which arise as to the affinities of the flora and fauna of the Alpes Maritimes with that of Corsica, the fact that the species ofCtenizawhich is found at Mentone, though allied to, is yet distinct from the insular species, gains a new interest.

We ask ourselves whether the Corsican species sprang from that of the Alpes Maritimes, orvice versâ; or again, whether both diverged in remote times from a common ancestor. Questions such as these cannot be answered at present, but I hope the day may come when the geographical distribution of the variousexisting forms of life will be traced with sufficient accuracy to enable us to follow on the map the lines along which affinity travels; and thus point out at once the probable relationship between two given forms, and also the route by which they reached their present stations. Records of local varieties, and the careful discrimination between forms which have small but permanent points of difference, thus acquire an importance which they would not otherwise possess.

The geographical distribution of trap-door spiders is of peculiar interest on account of the sedentary habits maintained during life by the females. Most animals are capable of travelling long distances, or of being accidentally transported from place to place in such a way that colonies are frequently established far away from the parent settlement, and we are left in the dark as to whence they came and who are their nearest relations. But, in the case of spiders inhabiting true trap-door nests, this is not so; they begin life immediately on leaving the parent nest by making homes for themselves near at hand which they will not desert, and there is no likelihood of their being accidentally carried from place to place unless occasionally by running water. Thus it happens that whenever we find the same trap-door spider at two distant localities, we may feel tolerably sure that the species has travelled from one to the other by gradual extension, and that, either now or in times past, it occupied all the intervening country.

For instance, we findNemesia Eleanoraat Mentone, and again at Cannes, while it has not yet been detected at Nice, Antibes, nor any other intermediate point; but according to this hypothesis, this specieseither does actually live, or has done so formerly, along the whole intervening line. I will now enumerate the species alluded to in the preceding pages and indicate briefly the habitats which they are known with certainty to occupy.

I.Atypus piceus, Sulzer (ex Simon). The builder of the tubular nest the silk lining of which is figured at A inPl. XIIIIt is stated by M. Simon153to be common in all the centre, east, and west of France, but it remains doubtful whether this exact form is found in England or not, the true characters and habits of the English species being still uncertain.

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