138 JOURNAL OF THE 



being in a space not more than thirty yards square. The soil is 

 a gray loam with red clay subsoil, and has not been cultivated, 

 I suppose, in forty years. For a number of years past this bit 

 of pine forest has formed part of a pasture for cows. The 

 occurrence of the tubes elsewhere has been reported to me. Mr. 

 Carey J. Hunter, an intelligent citizen of Raleigh, tells me that 

 few objects on his father's farm near Apex, Wake county, N. C, 

 were more familiar to him than these silk tubes. He remem- 

 bers them most distinctly as supported by decaying oak stumps 

 in cultivated fields. Many persons of whom I have made 

 inquiries say that they have not seen them, — a fact which may 

 probably be accounted for by the effective mimicry which the 

 shrewd builder studies.* 



As to choice of a support for the tube — in the case of this 

 species in this locality always present and presumably indispen- 

 sable — she i>^ probably limited by what the locality supplies. 

 That delightful '^rambling natur'alist," Dr. Abbott, says that on 

 one occasion a certain spider vselected the end of his nose for the 

 attachment of its thread, so long had he remained motionless in 

 an intent observation. But Atypus is more reserved and cau- 

 tious. With two exceptions, all the tubes I have seen were 

 attached by their upper ends to pine trees varying from 3 to 35 

 cm. in diameter. Of the two exceptions, one, supported by a 

 very small persimmon shrub, is figured in the Plate (Fig. IV); 

 the other is supported by a wild rose. 



The process of tube-building I have not observed in the 

 natural situation, but it can hardly be widely divergent from 

 that which I have observed in captive specimens. It may, there- 

 fore, be serviceable to record here the history of a tube made de 

 novo in captivity and under conditions more nearly resembling 

 the natural than in the case described above. 



At 10 a. m., Noveml)er 23d, I put a fine specimen, which had 

 been taken from the pities the evening l)efore, into a glass jar 

 28 cm. high, 5 cm. in diameter, and containing 14 cm. of damp 



*Excepting tlie upper end, the wliite silk of the tijl)es is for the most part concealed 

 beneath a loose exterior coating of bits of barU and leaves and small gravels and par- 

 ticles of earth. That these are collected outside of the tube is evidenced by the exam- 

 ple of a large tube which is sparsely clothed with single leaves and tufts of leaves of a 

 moss (Atri(dium) near a bed of which it stands. Another tube is in its lower portion 

 qnite green with bits of a lichen (Cladonia) furnished by a neigliboring cushion. 



