ELISHA MITCHELL SCIENTIFIC SOCIETY. 41 



the discovery of her nest, and attempted by this strategy to 

 deceive her enemy. If the jar of earth had been more capac- 

 ious, and a longer time given the spider, she might have 

 made a branch and second door. 



Food liahifs. I have not yei had an opportunity of mak- 

 ing very extensive observations on the food habits of these 

 species, and cannot say that each one is confined to the in- 

 sect for which I am certain it lias a special fondness as an 

 article ofdiet. Of the speci es of /'ac/u/lonicrns my observa- 

 tions have been confined to 'P. carftblvortis. I have already 

 stated the fondness which this speeies has for carabid beetles, 

 and though killing several ants and flies did not use them 

 for food. During July, while at Ithaca, N. Y., I fed several 

 carabid beetles to a 7^. cir-foloorus which I had alive. June 

 20, I placed a TtiTo-sfichnJi 1 uciihlo nilus\ Say, in the bottle con- 

 taining the nest of the spider. During the night the spider 

 came out of the nest, caugt the beetle, ate it and ejected the 

 hard parts from the nest. July 1st, it disposed of a 'Pterjst'i- 

 r./ius Sat/i\ Brulle. June 29 it ate a beetle of the genus 

 ChhviiiiiH. At another time it ate three good sized beetles 

 of the genus Chhi^nius in one night. 



The observatiion which I made on iVidiuaJvahi Afarxii in 

 captivity are very interesting. I noticed that at night the 

 spider would throw its doors wide open'' as shown in fig. 17, 

 Plate IV. One evening I placed several in the jar containing 

 the nest. When an ant approached so near the door as to 

 send communication to the spider of its presence, the spider 

 sprang to the entrance, caught a door with the anterior legs 



' I am iariebted to Prof J. A. Comst jck for the identitication of the 

 species of beetles. 



- The position of Nhlwalvdn in the subfamily Krwchniili cp shows its 

 near relation to the Ah/]>him I liave often been struck with ns likf ness 

 to the A'}iph:(p,, especially in the kin<l 'f ^^ nest it makes, Hnd though I 

 l)ave never seen an .4///2>".v, nor one of its nests, I have often ( oncluded 

 tliat ln>m the form o' lis nest i' must be somewliat similar to J^'idivdlvaia 

 in architectural habit, and that i1h^ |<rcsen<',e of a (]<)f)]\ (r covtrir^ for 

 the tMitraiure to its nest insiead ot'b' ing wanting, lias Ix't'n overl<r krc* ; 

 Ibat in the ca-es where 'he nest was open, accident had removed ihe, 

 door. What (>. P. Cambridge says in Annals of Nat. Hist. 4'h s^eries 

 1875, Vol. XVI, p. 240 -A\, seems to me to indicate that Afi.p'is is very 

 similar in h ibit to this genus JNTot only in the form of the nest, but in 

 its food habit. He says that on one occasion a nest which apparently 

 had no oritice was buried in a box of earth; subsequently the uibe was 

 observed with a wide open mouth, and again was closed the following 

 morning. The spider probably opens the doors at night to watch lor 

 food, and closes them in the morning as doei iV. marxii. 



