TRAP-DOOR SPIDERS. 235 



and the aerial prolongation of the tube sometimes 

 found in nests of the wafer type. 



But perhaps the most suggestive point of re- 

 semblance consists in the habit which this Tarantula 

 possesses of covering and closing the aperture of the 

 nest during the winter with a thin layer of materials, 

 similar to those of which the chimney is composed, 

 and, like them, bound together with silk. This is, in 

 fact, an immovable wafer-door, and precisely re- 

 sembles those which I have seen constructed by 

 Nemcsia JSIaiiderstjeriKe, and N. Elecaiora, when captive 

 and placed in an artificial hole in the earth. 



The tubes are, as has been already stated, open 

 during the spring, and we may suppose that the 

 spider, on the approach of warm weather, wakes up 

 from her winter lethargy, and tears away this con- 

 cealing thatch. But if one of these spiders should 

 by chance happen to free this silk-woven thatch by 

 cutting round some three-fourths of its circumference, 

 so as to leave it still attached to the rim of the 

 aperture of the nest by the remaining quarter, she 

 would then have made for herself a veritable, though 

 rather rude trap-door of the wafer kind. 



It is most likely, however, that the spider knows 

 what she is about and that a door to her dwellino- 

 would be the reverse of an advantasre to her, for she 

 is more powerful and swifter than the generality of 

 European trap-door spiders, and, as she probably 

 lives by leaping out upon and hunting her prey, she 

 no doubt needs to have the entrance to her nest free 

 of all encumbrance. 



1 am indebted to the Rev. W. G. Brackenridore 

 for evidence of the very interesting fact that 



