Ecological and Behavior Notes 69 



the tops cut away by the mower, the pith removed and 

 the tunnels plastered with mud. In one large collection 

 which I made of these sealed twigs, about a dozen were 

 found upon closer examination to have the tunnel closed 

 not Avith mud, but ^Wth this little gray spider, motion- 

 lessly keeping guard at the top of the tunnel. There is 

 doubtless purpose in this; he probably gets many a meal 

 through this disguise. Even though the bushes are leaf- 

 less, the Ceratina bees come to nest in the cut stalks, and 

 a certain Chrysomelid beetle is frequently found among 

 them. This spider was seen at Wickes, June 18, 1920, 

 devouring a fly, Ptilodexia sp. [J. M. Aldrich]. 



Dolomedes idoneus. [J. H. Emerton]. Two of these 

 females were observed for a time in confinement. The 

 first, after having spent a week in the glass jar with 

 earth-covered bottom, made a packet of eggs and carried 

 it beneath her body. During my absence of three days 

 her €gg-case disappeared ; I fear that some beetles or a 

 cricket, which I had placed there for food, had dispatched 

 it. The most interesting point is that this one seemed 

 never to eat during the time she carried her egg-case, 

 although all the while choice viands were before her, and 

 she became thinner and thinner until her death on July 

 14, while her contemporary without an egg-case, in the 

 cage beside her, ate freely and looked well. The other, 

 after a few days, was found manipulating a bunch of wet, 

 yellow, fresh eggs. They were in three heaps, but she 

 seemed to try to get them together while she stood high 

 on tiptoe and spun a web around them, but in the artifical 

 surroundings the work was too imperfectly done for the 

 details to be normal. She, too, died before the eggs 

 hatched. These two, while imprisoned, refused to eat 

 honey-bees, Lucanus dania, Carolina locust, cuckoo bee, 

 ensign fly, larvae of potato beetle, Bercaea haeynorrhoi- 

 dales Fab., and another bug, Acrostrernimi hilaris Say. 

 [E. H. Gibson], but gladly accepted daddy-long-legs, 

 spiders, black crickets, meal-bug adults, flies, a half- 



