TRAP-DOOR SPIDERS. 24.5 



attempt to drag a house-fly entire down tlieir tubes 

 for wliich it is much too large, when the door is 

 pushed open, and the fly remains sticking in the 

 entrance to the nest with its legs up in the air. One 

 may even feed these spiders oneself by approaching 

 carefully and, without causing any vibration, pushing 

 the fly, placed on the end of a pencil, within reach of 

 the spider. 



I have given my reasons before {Jnfs and Sj/iders, 

 p. 127) for believing that the trap-door spiders do not 

 as a rule desert their nests, but enlarge them from time 

 to time to meet their own requirements of growth ; 

 showing, by a comparison of the measurements of the 

 doors of eight nests in April with those of the same 

 nests in the following October, that all had increased 

 in size. 



Subsequent observations have confirmed this ; I find 

 that the young spiders taken from the mother's nest en- 

 large their nests in captivity in a precisely similar way. 



Thus, for example, the wafer doors of three young 

 Eleanora spiders, made within a few days after their 

 removal from the mother's nest on February 20th, 

 1873, and first measured on February 28th, had 

 increased between that date and Nov. 29th following 

 from 2 to 4 lines, 2J to 4 lines, and 2^ to 6 lines 

 respectively. 



It is unfortunate that the male and female spiders 

 are undistinguishable when very young, as it would 

 be interesting to know whether the males construct 

 nests before they take to their adult life, during which 

 they roam from place to place and hide under stones. 



In one case fourteen young spiders, forming this 

 entire family taken with a female N. MandersrjerncBt 



