552 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [Dec, 



spider was horizontal, dorsum uppermost, the feet fixed against the 

 inner surface of the nest. 



Another female (1534 C) occupied the time from 7.45-8.16 P.M. 

 to produce the viscid drop. Another one (1534 D) worked from 

 5.54-6.32 P.M. to make the drop, occupied 5 minutes in the discharge 

 of the eggs into it, then took more than an hour to free herself from it. 



In not a single instance of the egg masses laid in captivity (13 cases) 

 was either a special base spun for the egg mass or a cover spun around 

 it. The inner surface of the nest serves as a base, there is no silken 

 cover, but the eggs are held together insecurely by the hardening of 

 the salivary drop ; insecurely, because the egg mass readily rolls out of 

 the nest, and the eggs are easily shaken apart by light handling. 



It remains to be determined just what glands furnish the viscid 

 drop into which the eggs are discharged. It may be composed of a 

 secretion issuing from the mouth, or from the impaired gland of the 

 rostrum or the salivary glands of the maxillary plates. 4 



Of the 13 timed egg masses deposited in captivity, 8 were made 

 between 6 and 8 P.M., 3 about 5 P.M., and only 1 in the early morning. 



The time from egg laying to hatching is unusually long in this species, 

 at least for eggs laid in the summer. 5 If we consider as hatching the 

 time when the spiderlings first commence locomotion, the 8 timed 

 cases in Ariadna presented time intervals between egg laying (in last 

 week of June and first week of July) and hatching of from 63-70 days. 



Not more than one egg mass was made by any of my captives, and 

 to test whether any individuals may oviposit twice in the same year 

 I caught on 22 August 9 females, each from a nest with a single mass 

 of eggs or young, and kept them together in a large cage until 12 Septem- 

 ber, but no further eggs were laid. Since the first eggs are laid after 

 the middle of June and do not hatch until September, and since the 

 middle of September brings in cooler weather, it seems probable that 

 they oviposit only once in a year — a condition rare in spiders. 



It is general, though not invariable, that at the time of oviposit ion 

 the spider closes the entrance to the nest by spinning over it, and all 

 my captives that had so closed their nests kept them sealed until 

 after the young had hatched. How long the young remain in the nest 

 after hatching was not determined. But wild spiders, in natural 



4 On the glands in the vicinity of the mouth cf. especially: Plateau, 1877, 

 Recherches sur la structure de l'appareil digestif, etc., chez les Araneides dipneu- 

 mones, Bull. Acad. Roy. Belg. (2), 44; and Bertkau, 1884, Verdauungsapparat 

 der Spinnen, Corresporidenzbl. Naturh. Ver. preuss. Rheinlande. 



5 In certain Epeirids, whose eggs are laid in the autumn, hatching does not 

 take place until the following spring, the cold arresting the development. 



