102 KANSAS UNIVERSITY SCIENCE BULLETIN. 



Type: Heteropoda regia. 



The Huntsman spider lives in the sunny South. Specimens 

 sometimes find their way North in bunches of bananas, and in- 

 habit the warerooms in which the fruit is stored. The female 

 of this species, solicitous for the welfare of her progeny, carries 

 the egg-sack about in her cheliceroe, clasped to the sternum. It 

 is a sort of flat, biscuit-shaped affair of two pieces, joined at 

 the circumference. One of the slightly convex surfaces is of 

 paper-like texture, the other a little looser. I have made no 

 further observations upon this species, except to record the 

 finding of a female carrying a sack of eggs on May 29. 



Family DICTYNID^. 



An interesting family of small, curled-thread weavers. The 

 females show especial solicitude for the welfare of the young, 

 remaining with them in the tangled web, which contains the 

 cocoons, for several weeks after they hatch. It is more than 

 likely that during a part of this time the mother spider supplies 

 them with food ; in fact, I have on more than one occasion ob- 

 served the young of Amaurobius sylvestris swarming over and 

 apparently feeding on a fly which the mother had just captured. 

 The cocoons are always little button-shaped affairs, less than 

 one-fourth inch in diameter, attached by a few threads to twig, 

 leaf, woodwork, or stone wall, or enclosed in a little tangle of 

 curled silk in the top of some dead weed. Each spider spins 

 several of these, rearing her broods at intervals during the 

 summer. 



Type: Dictyna volucripes. 



This species makes its little irregular web in the seed clusters 

 or tops of weeds. Here the cocoons are placed. Sometimes only 

 one is found ; sometimes four or five. Each is button-shaped, 

 about one-eighth inch in diameter, and consists of two slightly 

 convex pieces joined at the circumference. They are pure 

 white and of a texture about like that of thin blotting-paper. I 

 have found cocoons containing eggs from the latter part of June 

 to late in September. The average number of eggs in a cocoon 

 is somewhere near fifteen. They are yellowish white and ap- 

 parently slightly agglutinate. The mother spider is invariably 

 found in the web with the cocoons. It is evident that she re- 



