THE SPIDER RA VISHERS. 147 



and again, only to be dropped tlie next second, wliile the wasp 

 rushed back and forth between it and the hole. In time this 

 method of procedure brought it close to the nest, but it was car- 

 ried around the edge once or twice even then. At last, acci- 

 dentally as it seemed, it fell in,, when the wasp quickly ran in 

 also and pulled it down. For half an hour she remained inside 

 and when she came out we caught her to make sure of her iden- 

 tity. As we set her free immediately we expected her to go to 

 work at covering her nest, but in, this we were disappointed for 

 she did not return. We left the place undisturbed from the 

 thirteenth to the fifteenth of August, when we dug up the nest. 

 We found the spider, but if there was any egg upon it we lost 

 it. The spider was alive, as was shown by a quivering of the 

 legs. This quivering gTew fainter and fainter until upon the 

 nineteenth it was scarcely perceptible, and on the twenty-first 

 the spider was^dead. Our first spider had been stung to death 

 at once, while this one lived seven days and a half after being 

 stored. 



A third niarginatus was discovered at noon of the nineteenth. 

 She had dragged her prey from a distance, frequently leaving 

 it to hunt about after the manner of her kind. We found no 

 egg on the spider — a Drassus — wliich was paralyzed, the an- 

 terior pair of legs quivering. On the morning of the twentieth 

 we felt sure that it was dead, still we re-exaniined it on the 

 twenty-first and twenty-second to be certain that there was no 

 recovery. 



On August twenty-sixth we found a fourth specimen of 

 margmatus. She was running rapidly backwards dragging a 

 young Phidippus iripunctatus which she grasped in any way 

 that was convenient, sometimes one side being up and some- 

 times the other. When she reached the grass at one side of the 

 field she left the spider on the groimd and began to hunt about 

 for a place in which to bestow it. About six feet away she dis- 

 covered a cavity made by the piling together of two or three 

 lumps of earth. This she examined carefully, first outside and 

 then within, going in by one opening and coming out by an- 



