TRAP- DOOR SPIDERS. 217 



enemies and more competitors are found, are reserved 

 for the architects of the more compHcated nests. 



Doubtless naturalists will soon discover wafer nests 

 on the slopes of the Pyrenees, as for example at Pau 

 and other winter stations in South-western France ; 

 and perhaps the coast of the Bay of Biscay may also 

 yield specimens, even to the north of Bordeaux. If 

 so, this curious speculation as to whether there is any 

 relation between simplicity of structure and warmth 

 of climate, will be put on its trial. 



About the very time when I was engaged in digging 

 out these new wafer nests at Montpellier, the celebrated 

 arachnologist, Dr. L. Koch of Nuremberg, had just 

 published* an account and figure of a very remarkable 

 nest which he had received from Australia, and which, 

 though differing both in form and proportions from 

 the Montpellier nest, may nevertheless perhaps be 

 referred to the present single-door branched wafer type. 



This Australian nest, the exact habitat of which 

 is not mentioned, is constructed by a spider now de- 

 scribed for the first time under the name of Idioctis 

 helva. The nest has a wafer-door about the size of a 

 sixpence, closing a vertical tube less than half an 

 inch long, which meets and opens into a horizontal 

 tube about three inches in length, and forms with it 

 wliat may be roughly likened to the figure of a capital 

 T inverted, thus, ±. 



The upstroke of the T is however, very short, and 

 one of the arms is longer than the other, and curved 

 downwards at its extremity. This is, as far as I know, 

 the first recorded example of a wafer-nest from the 



* Dr. L. Koch, Arachniden Australieus, lOte. Lieferuug, Nuraberg, 1874, 

 tab. xxxvii. fig. 3, p. 484. 



