226 SUPPLEMENT TO 



the knife (a common table-knife), wliicli furnished me 

 at once with a good specimen of the nest and of its 

 occupant. 



When the spider has once fairly determined upon 

 resistance, it is scarcely possible to make her retreat 

 without destroying the nest, and, in one case, when I 

 tried to push the lower door down from above, while 

 she was pressing it upwards from below, I found 

 that, without crushing my opponent, I could not 

 succeed. 



There were probably young in the nest on this 

 occasion, for I have frequently found them in the 

 nests with the mother at this season. In no case did 

 I even catch a glimpse of the male, and this sex is at 

 present unknown. 



The young spiders make their nests at an early 

 age, and there can be no doul3t that N. congener 

 enlarges its dv/elling from time to time as growth 

 demands, just as the trap-door spiders at Mentone do. 

 Indeed in one of these new Hyeres nests I found, 

 outside the main tube and some way above the 

 existing lower door, a former and disused lov^er door 

 much smaller than the one then in use, and which 

 had evidently belonged to the nest at a previous 

 stage of its development. I have observed this 

 before in the nests both of N. MandersfjerncB and N. 

 Meanora. 



This new type is strictly intermediate between the 

 double-door unbranclied wafer nest constructed by 

 N. Eleanora, and the double-door branched wafer with 

 the descending cavity whicli I am now about to 

 describe. 



This latter nest, the work of N. ManderstjerncB, 



