THE WOOD-BORERS 



almost continuously for four days, the female sometimes 

 being gone for hours at a time. On the last day he even 

 revisited the nest three or four times after it had been 

 sealed up. 



It is upon the female that the heaviest part of the 

 work devolves. As soon as she has put the nest in order 

 she begins the arduous task of catching spiders where- 

 with to store it. It usually takes her from ten to twenty 

 minutes to find a spider and bring it home, but she is 

 sometimes absent for a much longer time. When the 

 spider has been carried to the nest the process of pack- 

 ing it in begins. This occupies some time, and appar- 

 ently a good deal of strength, — the female pushing it 

 into place with her head, totally disregarding its com- 

 fort, all the spiders that are caught being pressed and 

 jammed together into a compact mass. While she is 

 busied in this way she makes a loud cheerful humming 

 noise. The number of spiders brought seems to depend 

 upon their size, in which quality they vary greatly, the 

 largest ones being six or eight times as large as the small- 

 est. Rubrocinctum fills her nest with from seven to four- 

 teen, while the larger albopilosum brings as many as 

 twenty-five or thirty. Those that we examined repre- 

 sented many different genera, and even different fami- 

 lies, although they were usually orb-weavers. 



183 



