40 SPIDERS [CH. 



the animal home and observe it in captivity. We 

 have prepared for its reception a box about a foot 

 square, with a gauze top and a movable glass front. 



It is not such an easy matter to secure the spider, 

 which can run like a lamp-lighter, and which has a 

 way of escape at the lower end of its tube. The 

 safest way is suddenly to shut off this means of 

 retreat with the finger and thumb of the left hand 

 and simultaneously to present a glass phial at the 

 mouth of the tube ; the spider runs up into it and is 

 taken without the risk of injury. It is never 

 advisable to handle spiders, not because any British 

 species is formidable, but because they so readily 

 part with their limbs in order to escape, and the 

 chances are that only a mutilated specimen will be 

 obtained. 



Now Agelena does not seem to be a particularly 

 engaging pet, but it has its points. In the first 

 place, it very quickly makes itself at home ; a short 

 time is spent in exploring its new quarters, but it 

 adapts itself almost at once to its changed situation. 

 Moreover it is of a peaceable and domestic disposition 

 and the male and female live amicably together, 

 which is far from being the case among the Epeiridae, 

 whose peculiar marital relations are often quite 

 wrongly attributed to the whole tribe of spiders. A 

 male garden- spider courts the female at the risk of 

 his life, and it is not surprising that he should evince 



