1887.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 371 



should be returned to him.^ As the individual seemed to be in ffood 

 health, I preserved its life in order to gain information as to its 

 habits and vital endurance. It was first placed in a large glass 

 fish globe on a bed of earth, where it was kept for more than 

 a year. It was then transferred to a wooden box made with 

 glazed slides and a sliding glass door at the top, the whole being 

 eighteen inches long, twelve inches wide and ten high. One 

 end was filled with dry soil which was slightly compacted and 

 heaped up ; the other end was sparsely covered with earth. There 

 was thus presented a bit of level space for a water trough, for exer- 

 cise etc., and full opportunity for the spider to burrow should it be 

 inclined to its natural tastes. The animal was kept in this box un- 

 til mid-summer of the present year. I last saw it early in July, just 

 prior to my departure for England. On June 22nd, 1887, I made 

 this note : "This spider which has been kept ever since 1882 is to- 

 day in good health. It is on the outside of the earth moundlet in 

 its box looking hearty after the winter's fast. It has had nothing 

 to eat since October last at least eight months, but has had water 

 freely. Some flies have been put into it lately, but I do not know 

 that they have been eaten." The spider was then left in the care 

 of my friend, Professor Fronani, who for several summers, while at 

 work in the Library hall of the Academy-, had kindly cared for it 

 during my absence, giving it water and feeding it with insects, par- 

 ticularly grass-hoppers, or locusts. 



On my return from abroad I was met at the Academy by the in- 

 telligence that my tarantula was dead. It had descended into the 

 buri-ow, which for several years it had maintained close to the side 

 of the box, about the end of July, and since then had not come up. 

 Looking into the box I could see against the glass what appeared 

 to be the fragments of the moulted skin on one side of the cavity, 

 and on the other side the outlines of the creature's dead body. Prof 

 Leidy, from whom the animal had been received, and after whom I 

 had named it, (a name being convenient for familiar reference,) hap- 

 pened to be in the Library hall at the time I took up the remains 

 of the spider from its burrow. We found the carcass already partly 

 decomposed and being preyed upon by dermestid larvae. Close be- 

 side it were the fragments of its cast skin. It had evidently died 

 shortly after moulting. 



1 It was captured about the beginning of April 1882, at Hill's Ferry, Stanislaus 

 Co., California, was kept in a bottle without food for two weeks, then sent to 

 Prof. G. E. H. Weaver at Media, then a student in Swarthmore College. Mr. 

 Weaver fed it on beefsteak which it took readily. 



