134 JOURNAL OF THE 



A TUBE-BUILDING SPIDER. 



NOTES ON THE ARCHITECTURAL AND FEEDING HABITS OF ATYPUS 



NIGER HENTZ (?). 



W. L. POTEAT. 



Quite nnaccountably American naturalists have taken com- 

 paratively little interest in spiders. Of all this neglected group 

 the Atypinie appear to have been most slighted. In our limited 

 arachnological literature, so far as it has met my eye, when they 

 are mentioned at all, it is with conspicuous brevity an(] often 

 with a confession of doubt, if not of ignorance. Hentz himself, 

 in his "Spiders of the United States,"* says: "The manner in 

 which the spiders belonging to Mygale and Oletera [Syn. Aty- 

 pus] live, bidden under ground, and probably issuing out only 

 at night, prevents our becoming acquainted with their habits.'' 

 Of Atypus in particular he says: " The habits of the animals of 

 this subgenus are but little known." He seems to have erected 

 the species which bears his name from observation of a single 

 male individual. He probably never saw the tube of the female. 

 Professor Emerton, in a private letter, says that they are rare, if 

 they occur at all, north of Virginia. In his admirable little 

 treatise on spidersf he says that a part of the tube of Atypus 

 forms the lining of a hole in the ground, and part lies above the 

 surface among stones and plants, and that the mouth of the tube 

 is almost always closed, at least when the spider is full grown. 

 Professor Corastock, of Cornell, quoting Mr. N. Banks, one of 

 his assistants, writes me: "Their food is believed to be earth- 

 worms. The tubes appear to be closed at botli ends." And 

 Professor Geo. F. Atkinson, of Alabama, who has probably given 

 more attention to the Territelaria^ than any other student in this 

 country, saysX that he has never seen Atypus or its nest, but 



*0ccas. Papers Bost. Soe. Nat. Hist., Vol. 4, pp. 18, 1<J. 

 tSpiders, Their Structure and Habits, p. 44. 

 JEntom. Amer., Vol. 2, p. IIG, note. 



