ELISHA MITCHELL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 137 



A house-fly witli one wiug removed was put into tlie jar. 

 Soon after it touched the tube the spider appeared above the 

 opaque portion of it, and, moving up only as the fly moved, she 

 was soon separated from it by only the delicate wall of silk. 

 Before I was aware she had made a hole in the wall and was 

 drawing the fly in. She sank out of sight with her prey. Fif- 

 teen minutes later the rent through which the fly had been 

 drawn w^as repaired. 



After an absence of three weeks I found that my prisoner, 

 left in the care of my wife, had further lengthened her tube and 

 fastened its upper end to the small porcelain dish used to cover 

 the jar. What is perhaps more interesting, she had attached to 

 the outer wall of the new portion particles of trash, which made 

 it less conspicuous. The refuse parts of flies fed to her in the 

 meantime were found on the outside of the tube near its upper 

 end. She was herself outside the tube on the leaves early in 

 the day. When disturbed she raised her fangs with a show of 

 fight. She seemed, however, to have become dissatisfied with 

 her nest (because its situation supplied no moisture?*) and she 

 did not care to retreat into it, but crawled up the side of the jar 

 with its aid. With her fangs she struck a large fly placed near 

 her, but did not care to eat it. After some hours she was in the 

 tube again, but five days later she was found among the pine 

 leaves dead.f My notes on my first Atypus close with this 

 melancholy entry: "Alcoholic specimen, No. 17.^' 



I have given the history of this specimen in captivity with so 

 much of detail because every part of it, except the last, agrees 

 with habits which I have since observed in natural conditions. 

 That was the only specimen which I have seen outside of her 

 tube of her own accord. 



A number of other tubes were discovered in the same locality 

 soon after the first. In the three years now passed I have seen 

 in a very restricted area as many as thirty tubes varying from 

 the size of a goose-quill to 3 cm. in diameter, four-fifths of them 



*Cf. Encycl. Brit., Vol. 2, p. 298 (9th Ed.). 



tCf. similar case of Cteniza californica leaving nest before death, E. Blanehard, Pop. 

 Sci. Mon., Vol. 33, p. 807. 



