1909.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 555 



portion of the process was seen, as follows: Female No. 1571 was 

 caught 31 July in a natural cocoon-nest. Placed in a cage she spun 

 some lines that night, and on 2 August spun quite a network of lines 

 from 7.30 P.M. up to 1 A.M., frequently stopping to bite lines that 

 impeded her movements and taking the relatively long period of from 

 several seconds to half a minute to make a line attachment. On 

 5 August at 3.10 A.M. I found her in the act of beginning the cover 

 to a freshly laid mass of eggs. She had constructed a flat scaffolding 

 of silk, inclined at an angle, extending from a twig to the wall of the 

 cage. The egg mass had been laid upon this scaffolding, and probably 

 only a short time previously, for the eggs were but thinly covered with 

 silk. The cocoon was not regularly circular in outline, but irregularly 

 polygonal, and its diameter was less than the length of the spider. 

 When first seen she was holding its edges with her feet and was appfying 

 the thread by raising and lowering the abdominal apex, and this 

 method she pursued throughout, which accounts for the cocoon being 

 loose in texture and with no dense outer layers. 10 When she had 

 accomplished spinning the cover to the eggs the cocoon had the form 

 of a plano-convex lens, quite different from the spherical shape when 

 fully completed. At 3.55 she commenced to free the margins of the 

 cocoon from the scaffolding by biting certain threads, mainly of the 

 lower portion, of the scaffolding, alternating (for 10 minutes) this biting 

 with spinning on the surface so freed. At 4.10 she fastened a line 

 from the cocoon to the roof, then continued her spinning. From 

 4.20-5.00 she was occupied in again biting the lines that held the 

 cocoon to the scaffolding, finally leaving the cocoon suspended by its 

 upper margin within a freed space. It had now become nearly 

 circular. 



The general process of cocooning is thus as described by me for 

 Lycosids, but different in that the upper margin of the cocoon is left 

 attached and suspended until after it is completed (in some cases this 

 attachment is maintained for a couple of days afterward), whereas 

 Lycosids finish their cocoons while held beneath their bodies. 



Hatching and Progeny-nests. — Of three cocoons made in confinement 

 (between 31 July and 6 August) and kept to hatching, the young- 

 emerged in 25, 26 and 30 days respectively. The mother holds the 

 cocoon until a day or two before the young hatch, then waits until the 

 first young come out before she makes the nest around them; none 



10 It need hardly be recalled that such application of the spinnerets always 

 produces architecture of soft consistency, while sweeping of the spinnerets 

 without elevation produces a firmer and tougher mesh. 



