1903.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 87 



diameter not quite equalling the length of her body; the scaffolding 

 around the disk served as a support for her feet. The making of 

 this base continued until 10.24. Then she stood above it with her head 

 directed toward its upper end, and deposited upon the centre of the 

 base from her genital aperture a large viscid drop of a transparent 

 fluid; and into this drop, the upper surface of which still adhered to 

 her body while its lower surface rested on the silken disk, there fell 

 in succession about. 13 large ova, easily seen by their yellow color 

 within the viscid drop. This discharge of drop and ova did not 

 exceed two minutes. Then at 10.26, before the upper surface of the 

 drop had become fully loosened from her genital aperture, she com- 

 menced rapidly spinning across the drop, brushing the spinnerets 

 from side to side and occasionally rotating the position of the body 

 until she covered it with an evenly thick coating of white silk. This 

 coating compressed the drop to the form of a flattened hemisphere; 

 the supporting base being still flat, and quite a broad margin of it 

 not covered by the upper covering of the cocoon. At 10.40 she com- 

 menced to bite the cocoon loose from the scaffolding, taking about 4 

 minutes in the process; when completely loosened it had the form of 

 a biconvex lens. She then seized and held it beneath her cephalo- 

 thorax with her third pair of legs, which like a pair of axles were first 

 applied to its rounded sides, and revolved it by pressing on its edge 

 with her palpi. While doing so, she held her abdomen bent verti- 

 cally downward, so as to bring the spinnerets against the edge (equator) 

 of the cocoon, and by spinning cemented down the overlapping 

 margin of the base of the cocoon to its cover ; it will be recalled 

 that the covering of the cocoon was of less diameter than the base. 

 Gradually and slowly the cocoon was rotated in other directions also, 

 still held below the cephalothorax above the floor, the extended 

 spinnerets brushing back and forth across its surface. At 10.50 the 

 cocoon was observed to have changed from a glistening white to a 

 lead-blue color (its final color is dark blue or dark gray) ; this may 

 be produced by a difference in the silk, or perhaps by a secretion 

 from the mouth. At 11.12, when I ceased observations, she was still 

 busy spinning upon the cocoon. It had now become much more 

 nearly globular, the definitive shape, and trace of a line around its 

 greatest diameter was all left to show that it had been formed of 

 two halves cemented together. 



The first cocoon of ? No. 57 was made on May 12. At 4.50 P.M. 

 she was found working upon the discoidal base (there had been no 

 trace of it less than an hour before), and continued until 5.06. Then 



