1888.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA, 217 



with a sort of swinging door. Hentz says that one winter he found 

 a burrow of a Lijcosa (species not named) supplied with a lid, and 

 he thinks it j^robable that all Lycosids close the orifice of their holes 

 for hibernation.^ I may say here that probably all burrowing Ly- 

 cosids close the openings of their nests as the cold season approaches, 

 and it is possible that the same habit Avill be found to prevail as a 

 protection against heavy rains even in the summer and autumn. 

 Mrs. Mary Treat says that certain Lycosids thus shut themselves in 

 just before moulting, and remain so until quite recovered from the 

 after debility^ 



Another interesting Lycosid tubemaker is the turret spider.^ This 

 creature constructs above the surface of the ground to the height of 

 one or two inches a little tower which is in form an irregular penta- 

 gon, and is composed of bits of straw, stalks of grass etc. It is quite 

 like the old fashioned mud-chimneys which I have often seen at- 

 tached to the gables of log cabins in the far Avest.* Unlike the sur- 

 face nest of Tigrina, the tower of Arenicola is invariably built in the 

 line of the burrow, the whole forming a straight perpendicular tube. 

 We have thus established, through the nest of Cyrtauchenius, a very 

 close connection between the nesting habits of the Lycosids and that 

 of the Territelarise. 



In the case of Atypxis sukeri, as it is seen in England and de- 

 scribed by its first observer, Mr. Joshua Brown, the nest assumes the 

 shape of a pendant inflated tube, covered with particles of sand, 

 closed at the top, extending nine inches more or less above the silk- 

 lined burrow of like depth, and attached to surrounding foliage. 

 In this form it cannot differ largely from that of our Pursevveb 

 spider except that the former is stayed among the grass-stalks and 

 the latter is fastened to the tree trunks. It would be interesting and 

 perhaps highly suggestive were Abbot's Atypus to be domiciled in 

 a grassy site away from trees, to note its behavior. Would it make 

 a nest quite like that of the English Atypus? * 



^ Spiders U. S. p. 25. 



2 « My Garden Pets," p. 82. 



3 Lycosa arenicola, Scudder. Psyche. Vol. II, p. 2, 1887. 



* McCook, " Tenants of an Old Farm," figs. 44, 45, p. 131-5. 

 5 Efforts to pursue my studies of the Purseweb spider were prevented by the loss 

 of the living specimens sent me by Miss Wittfeld from Florida. We exhausted 

 our ingenuity in providing protection for packages sent through the mail, but not 

 a spider lived. Evidently the species is more sensitive to such confinement than 

 many others. I regret to record that since writing this note, the young lady here men- 

 tioned has died. Her keen and intelligent interest in insect life are well known 

 and were highly appreciated not only by myself but by others entomologists. 



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