COCOON LIFE AND BABYHOOD. 



251 



) ;i greutly 



times its own length, and know how to make a perfect miniature of tlie 

 nests of its parents, seems to l)e a fact whicli lias scarcely a parallel in 

 Nature. (See Fig. 265.) 



When we remember how difiicult a .thing it is for even a trained 

 draughtsman to reduce by eye a complicated drawing or model tc 

 diminished scale, we must own tliat 

 the performance of this feat by a baby 

 spider is so surprising as almost to 

 exceed belief. And yet even the most 

 complicated form of trapdoor nest, 

 namely, that of the branched double 

 door type, is perfectly reproduced in 

 miniature by these tiny arcliitects, 

 with the upper door, the lower door, 

 the main tube, and the branched 

 body accurately jilaced.' 



Mr. A. R. "Wallace shows that tiiere 

 is some reason to doubt Whether birds, 

 which are so frequently said to build 

 by instinct, would construct the nest 

 proper to their kind if they were sep- 

 arated from the mother at the earliest 

 age and reared apart from her or oth- 

 ers of her kind. He states that birds 

 brought up from the egg in cages do 

 not build the jaroper specific nest; nor 

 do they even sing their parent's song 

 without being taught.^ AVhatever may 

 be the case with birds or other highly 

 organized animals, there is not the 

 slightest reason to doubt that, with 

 spiders, all forms of nests ai'e built 

 in the most perfect condition by the 

 young as soon as they are able to do 

 any work at all after being hatched 

 from the eggs. There is no fact which 

 I have more frequently observed and ^"'■^'^- The spmningwork commons of a brood of 



^ •^ young Agalenas, made in confinement. 



demonstrated than that all the inter- 

 esting habits of spiders, including those whicli would appear to require the 

 greatest reasoning powers, or the exercise of faculties that in highly or- 

 ganized animals would imply the possession of experience and cunning 



' Trapdoor Spiders, page 1'27. See Fig. }), plate ix., page 98. 

 ' Contributions to the Tlieory of Natural Selection. 



