148 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



species of Hippelates and a species of Hormomyia all of them 

 very troublesome pests to man. Mr. Schwarz said that he had 

 nothing to add to Mr. Simon's excellent account, and he wished 

 to testify as to the correctness of the latter's illustration of the net. 

 Three other nets of the same social spider were found near by, 

 but these were of greatly inferior size, the largest of them being 

 occupied by about 300 spiders. 



In discussion of this note Mr. Banks reviewed the literature of 

 the social spiders as given in Mr. Simon's article. He stated 

 that the nearest approach to a social spider in the United States 

 is Theridium studiosum Hentz, which is very closely related to 

 7\ socialis Simon. In this country one frequently finds several 

 webs of Hyptiotes, the nearest genus to Uloborus, on the same 

 dried branch, but not connected. Dr. Gill asked whether there 

 is a discrepancy in size between the two sexes of Uloborus, and 

 mentioned a Madagascar spider, Nephila madagascarensis 

 Vinson, in which the female is more than 100 times as large as 

 the male. Mr. Banks replied that in our Nephila pluinipes 

 Koch the male is just as small in proportion as in the Mada 

 gascar species. Mr. Schwarz said that the male of Nephila 

 plumipes is just as common as the female, but that it is easily 

 overlooked from its small size and from the fact that it always 

 occurs opposite the large body of the female on the other side of 

 the web. It appeared to him that on account of its extremely 

 small size and from the fact, just mentioned, that it is always on 

 the other side of the web, that it is well protected from the 

 cannibalistic habits of the female Nephila. Dr. Ash mead men 

 tioned the genus Gasteracantha as an instance among spiders in 

 which the male is smaller than the female. Mr. Banks remarked, 

 however, that the disparity in size in that genus is not nearly so 

 great as in Nephila. Mr. Caudell stated that it is not uncommon 

 to find numbers of spiders huddled together in one place in 

 winter. Mr. Banks said that he did not consider this an example 

 of socialism ; the spiders simply happened to seek the same place 

 for hibernation. - 



Mr. Banks presented the following paper : 



