244 AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWORK. 



These beetles were food for the young liousekeepers, but Mrs. Treat 

 tliought tliat they were not to their taste as much as flies, altliougli they 

 dare<l not as yet take a hving house fly, and if one came near them they 

 quickly dodged within their burrows. If a fly were killed and laid on 

 the tower, however, they would try to take it within, but it being impos- 

 sible to do this with the wings and legs adhering, they made manj' in- 

 genious but futile attempts to get the large carcass inside the burrow. If 

 the wings and legs were removed from the insect, and laid upon the tower, 

 the carcass was soon carried below and after a few hours was brouglit up 

 to dry and thrown out.^ 



In November the Tiger spiders all hermetically close their doors and 



keej) them shut until the following April, when they again come forth, 



the females each with a cocoon of eggs attached to the spinner- 



. ,. ets. Tlie eggs hatch in May, and the young spiders crawl upon 



the mother's back, literally covering her body. After a few days 



they leave her, and all at once come rushing out of the burrow. For two 



or three months these young spiders flit about here and there over bushes 



and on the lower liranches of trees, seemingly ambitious to get to higher 



places. 



Toward the end of July their roving lives cease, and they settle down 

 and dig little burrows in the earth, which they do not conceal the flrst 

 season. The wasps do not molest the young ones. The following spring, 

 when a year old, they are little more than half grown, and during the 

 summer they grow rapidly and moult several times, each time changing 

 tlieir appearance. By August they seem to be nearly full grown, when 

 their enemy, the wasp, makes havoc among them. By thus tracing the 

 life history of this spider we find it to be two years old l)efore the first 

 brood of young are hatched, and, if no accident Ijefnlls it, it ]irobalily lives 

 several years. '^ 



XIII. 



Mr. Frederick Enock ^ determined the maimer in which tlie young of 



Atypus piceus issue from the parental nest, and their subse(|uent behavior. 



Octobei' inth lie dug uj) five tubes, each containing a male and 



,, . female. The males were removed, and the tubes containing the 

 Atypinae. . . •- 



impregnated females were reset in a bank at the bottom of a 



garden, and were kei)t under daily notice during the seasons following. 

 March 28th of the next year the aerial extensions of the tubes, which dur- 

 ing the winter had laid nearly flat upon the bank, showed signs of being 

 repaired by the inmates. On the next day in the apex of each of the 

 five tul)es tliere was observed a small round liole one-sixteenth of an incli 



1 Mrs. Mary Treat, " Home Studies in Nature," Harper's Magazine, May, 1880. 

 ^ Idem, page 712. ■' Trans. Ento. Soc. Luml., 1SS5, page 3il."). 



