TRAP-BOOR SPIDERS. 25J. 



branched-wafer nest from Australia, alluded to above 

 (p. 217), and the fragmentary specimens of giant cork- 

 nests from the same country exhibited at the British 

 Museum, give us a hint of what the Antipodes will 

 some day reveal to us ; while a stray allusion to a 

 trap-door nest found near Lake Dilolo, in Southern 

 Africa, by Livingstone,* affords an indication of their 

 existence in another quarter of the globe. Hitherto 

 but little importance has been attached by naturalists 

 to the study of the nests of trap-door spiders, but a 

 knowledge of their structure is often of the greatest 

 assistance, and will, I venture to predict, be found to 

 afford a clue leading to the discovery of many new 

 species ; for it not unfrequently happens that, while 

 two spiders appear so much alike as to pass for repre- 

 sentatives of the same species, their nests are totally 

 dissimilar and proclaim them, as in fact they are, 

 quite distinct from one another. For an example of 

 this we have only to turn to the seven species of 

 Nemesia, treated of in the foregoing pages, of which 

 six construct dissimilar nests, and only two, building 

 nests of the cork type, make them alike, though the 

 general resemblance between the spiders themselves 

 is extraordinarily close. Thus far, indeed, it will be 

 seen that no two distinct species of European trap- 



* " A large reddish spider {Mygale), named by the natives ' sclali,' runs about 

 with great velocity. Its nest is most ingeniously covered with a hingtd cover 

 or door, about the size of a shilling, the inner face of which is of a pure white 

 silky substance like paper, while the outer one is coated with earth precisely 

 like that in which the hole is made, so that wlien it is closed it is quite impos- 

 sible to detect the situation of the nest. Unfortunately the cavity for breeding is 

 never seen except when the owner is out, and has left the door open behind her." — 

 Dr. Livivgslone, from " Fojmlar Accounts of Travels in South Africa" chap, 

 xvii. p. 221. 



