50 The Structure and Habits of Spiders. 



Mr. S. S. Saunders tried to see trap-door 

 spiders make their nests. When the earth was 

 dry, they would do nothing ; but, after watering 

 it, they several times dug new holes, but always 

 in the night. 



The food of the European trap-door spiders 

 consists largely of ants and other wingless 

 insects, and they have been known to eat earth- 

 worms and caterpillars. Mr. Moggridge has 

 often seen them, even in the daytime, open 

 their doors a little, and snatch at passing in- 

 sects, sometimes taking hold of one too large 

 to draw into the tube. One time he and some 

 friends marked some holes, and went and 

 watched them in the night. The doors were 

 slightly open, and some of the spiders' legs 

 thrust out over the rim of the hole. He held a 

 beetle near one of the spiders ; and she reached 

 the front part of her body out of the tube, push- 

 ing the door wide open, seized the beetle, and 

 backed quickly into the tube again, the door 

 closing by its own weight. Shortly after, she 

 opened it again, and put the beetle out alive and 

 unhurt, probably because it was too hard to eat. 

 He next drove a sow-bug near another hole ; 



