OVIPOSITION OF A CAPTIVE AMERICAN FALSE SPIDER 165 



the back, or the sternum — if food strays near them, they rise, 

 slay and eat. Occasionally the burrow was left open in the 

 day-time. On such occasions, on dumping live insects into the 

 jar, some were sure to fall into the burrow. Immediately the 

 false-spider would begin to eat. 



THE EGGS 



On the twenty-sixth of July the burrow of this false-spider 

 was built against the glass of the jar in such a manner that 

 practically all of the interior was visible. That evening the 

 solpugid did not come out to forage, and on the following morn- 

 ing she was resting quietly in the bottom of the burrow. Some- 

 time during the day she laid a batch of milk-white, spherical 

 eggs (Fig. 4). Each egg was about 1.7 millimeters in diameter. 

 At six on the evening of the twenty-seventh the eggs were in 

 the bottom of the burrow and the false-spider was resting about 

 halfway between them and the mouth of the burrow. At nine 

 that evening she was busy plugging the mouth of the burrow 

 with soil, taking pains not to include dead insects. Off and 

 on several dead moths got into the dirt she was shoving into 

 the burrow. Each time she caught the moth in her chelicerae 

 and dragged it, backwards, away from the burrow. Later in 

 the night, after having gluttonized, she excavated a new bur-^ 

 row in another part of the jar. For the next two weeks she 

 excavated a new burrow each night. 



On August the eighth no part of her burrow was exposed, 

 hence it was impossible to see what was transpiring inside. Up 

 to a few minutes after nine that evening she had not appeared 

 on the surface. This was past her usual time of appearing, 

 and since for several days I had been expecting her to lay again, 

 I began to wonder if she were ovipositing. Little by little the 

 soil was carefully removed until the solpugid was exposed in 

 her burrow. She had not laid. Soon after this disturbance 

 she crawled to the surface and moved about sluggishly; but did 

 not feed. I watched her until about eleven o'clock and then 

 went to bed. By the next morning she had oviposited. There 

 were a few milk-white, spherical eggs in the bottom of an ex- 

 ceptionally short burrow; and many more were strewn on the 

 ground near to and on its closed mouth. In the course of a 



