302 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



From some curious observations of M. Dorthes on this species in the 

 second volume of the Linnaan Transactions, it appears that both the 

 male and the female spider, and as many as thirty young ones, occasion- 

 ally inhabit one of these galleries. Mygale Sauvagesii of Rossi (M. 

 fodiens Walck.), which is a distinct species found in Corsica, forms a 

 similar habitation, of which M. Audouin has given us an interesting 

 description.^ 



The galleries just described are the work of European spiders ; but 

 similar ones are fabricated by Actinopus nidulans, an inhabitant of the 

 West India islands, as well as by many other tropical species. I have 

 seen one of these, which had been dug out of the earth, in the cabinet of 

 Thomas Hall, Esq., F. L. S., that was nearly a foot in length, and above 

 an inch in diameter, forming a cylindrical bag of dark-colored silk, closed 

 at the bottom, and accurately fitted at the top by a door or lid.^ 



The habitation of Argyroneta aquatica, the other spider to which I 

 alluded, is chiefly remarkable for the element in which it is constructed 

 and the materials that compose it. It is built in the midst of water, and 

 formed, in fact, of air ! Spiders areusually terrestrial, but this is aquatic, 

 or rather amphibious ; for though she resides in the midst of water, in 

 which she swims with great celerity, sometimes on her belly, but more 

 frequently on her back, and is an admirable diver, she not unfrequently 

 hunts on shore, and having caught her prey, plunges with it to the bottom 

 of the water. Here it is she forms her singular and unique abode. She 

 would evidently have but a very uncomfortable time were she constantly 

 wet, but this she is sagacious enough to avoid ; and by availing herself of 

 some well-known philosophical principles, she constructs for herself an 

 apartment in which, like the mermaids and sea-nymphs of fable, she 

 resides in comfort and security. The following is her process. First she 

 spins loose threads in various directions attached to the leaves of aquatic 

 plants, which may be called the frame-work of her chamber, and over 

 them she spreads a transparent varnish resembling liquid glass, which 

 issues from the middle of her spinners, and which is so elastic that it is 

 capable of great expansion and contraction ; and if a hole be made in it, 

 it immediately closes again. Next she spreads over her belly a pellicle 

 of the same material, and ascends to the surface. The precise mode in 

 which she transfers a bubble of air beneath this pellicle is not accurately 

 known ; but from an observation made by the ingenious author of the 

 little work from which this account is abstracted, he concludes that she 

 draws the air into her body by the anus, which she presents to the surface 

 of the pool, and then pumps it out from an opening at the base of the 

 belly between the pellicle and that part of the body, the hairs of which 

 keep it extended. Clothed with this aerial mantle, which to the spectator 

 seems formed of resplendent quicksilver, she plunges to the bottom, and, 

 with as much dexterity as a chemist transfers gas with a gas-holder, intro- 

 duces her bubble of air beneath the roof prepared for its reception. 

 This manoeuvre she repeats ten or twelve times, until at length in about a 

 quarter of an hour she has transported as much air as suffices to expand 



* Audouin in Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, ii. 69. 



* See several Memoirs upon ihis and some allied species by Messrs. Sells, Saunders, and 

 Westwood, in the Trans, of the Ent. Soc. of London, vols. ii. and iii. 



