OVIPOSITION OF A CAPTIVE AMERICAN FALSE SPIDER 161 



with great activity about houses at night, and are attracted by the light, and some- 

 times to sugared trees. They are rare, but appear more common in rainy seasons, 

 and only in dark and damp nights. They are probably solitary, and although 

 I have examined everything in the locality where they have been taken for years, 

 I have never found a single one in the day time. When attacked they raise and 

 swing their formidable palpi and show fight, but they are perfectly harmless.' 



" From Guanajuato, Mexico, Dr. Eugene Duges writes as follows: ' Here there 

 is a Ghtvia which the vulgar call Genisaro, and make out to be excessively ven- 

 omous, which it is not the least in the world.' 



" Dr. Edward Palmer, speaking of the specimens collected by him in Mexico, 

 says: ' The Solpnga marked San Louis Potosi was running in a garden, the one 

 from Bledos was taken out of my bed in the night, while the other was found under 

 a piece of volcanic rock.' 



" Dr. R. A. Phillippi, writing from Santiago, Chili, and speaking_ of the two 

 species described by Gervais (C. morsicans and M. variegata) says: " ' They are 

 very common in the streets of Santiago, running with great swiftness in the sun, 

 so that they are called ' aranas del sol,' (spiders of the sun); their bite is said to 

 be very painful, but I know of no personal experience of my friend or my own, 

 unless one case when a young daughter of mine having been bitten in the finger, 

 experienced severe pain, fever, and had the whole forearm swollen for two days, 

 but I do not know whether she was bitten by a Galeodes or by Lathrodectus 

 jormidabilia.' " 



Meager as these accounts are, so far as I have been able to 

 ascertain, they contain all of the first-hand knowledge we have 

 of the habits of the American false-spiders. 



THE BURROW* 



Knowing that the female of an Indian false-spider (17, 11) 

 burrows into the ground to lay her eggs, I confined my captive 

 in a glass jar containing about four inches of dry, compact soil. 

 Although it was broad daylight, she proceeded at once to exca- 

 vate a burrow. With her jaws (chelicerae) and her second pair 

 of legs, she dug out the soil and scraped it backwards. When 

 a pile of dirt had been thus accumulated beneath her body, 

 she shoved it away in the following manner. The ventral sur- 

 face of each chelicera is flat and on a level with the equally 

 flat ventral surface of the thorax (Figs. 2 and 3). The jaws 

 are on the upper anterior (dorso-anterior) portion of each cheli- 

 cera (Fig. 1) and the lower anterior (ventro-anterior) surface 

 of each chelicera is almost truncate (Fig. 3). With the body 

 appressed against the ground and the ventro-anterior surface 

 of the chelicerae pressing against the pile of dirt and the blades 

 of her jaws above it, the solpugid moved forward, pushing the 

 dirt ahead of her. These movements were repeated over and 

 over again until the burrow had been completed. 



*The false spider which supplied the data for this paper was sent to me alive, 

 from New Mexico, by Mrs. Maud Tanter. 



