THE TRIANGLE SPIDER: THE ORB SECTOR. 



191 



Feeding 

 Habits. 



Fk;. 183. Outlines of a relaxed net after service. 



ing; slowly rolls the insect in swathing thread until it assumes the ap- 

 pearance of a round flossy ball. One female that I observed was a 



long time in thus preparing for her banquet. The spirals of 



her web had been broken in 



the capture, a single thread 

 alone remaining. In another example 

 observed the entire interradial system 

 was obliterated. 



This, however, is not, as Wilder 

 supposes, a peculiar habit. I have fre- 

 quently noticed Epeiroids doing pre- 

 cisely the same thing. The only differ- 

 ence is that in the case of the latter a 

 space consisting of two, three, or four 

 radii would be cut out, leaving thus a large circle or wedge shaped gap 

 in the snare. This gap corresponds almost precisely to the appearance of 

 the Triangle spider's net after she has cut out the entangled fly and com- 

 pleted the enswathment preparatory to feeding. Of course, however, as 

 Hyptiotes makes only a sector of a circle, she has nothing left of her snare 

 after the insect is thus prepared ; whereas spiders making circular webs 

 have a goodly portion of their orbs intact and ready for service after one 

 sextant is destroyed. Substantially, then, we may say that the same thing 

 occurs with the snare of Hyptiotes and the snare of Epeira when the en- 

 tangled insect is captured, cut out, and enswathed. 



I noticed what seemed to me a remarkable peculiarity in the manner 

 of swathing and feeding upon a gnat taken by one of these spiders. Hyp- 

 tiotes hung to her tra|)line by the two fore feet, which were stretched out 

 quite at length from either side, as represented in Fig. 184. Her jaws and 

 palpi appeared to me (although I could not quite make this out) to be 

 supported upon the tra[)line. At least they overreached that line and 

 grasped the partly enswathed insect, which lay over the line on the side 

 op])Osite the spider's body. The palps reaching upward from one side and 

 the third feet reaching beneath from the other side revolved the insect, 



while the hind legs paid out the 



silk and manipulated the swathing 

 as represented at Fig. 184, The atti- 

 tude was an extremely odd one, ami 

 had tlie savor of that grotesqueness 

 which seems to me alwavs to mark 

 the appearance and behavior of this 

 aranead. 



When the fly M'as sufficiently secured it was carried back to the traj)- 

 line, wli( rcupon Hyptiotes rolled herself over beneath her line in the ordi- 

 nary posture, laid bold of the trapline by the two hind pairs of legs, and 



Fifi. 184. The Triangle spider swathing a fly. 



