205 [Wilder. 



the first specimen found upon Folly Island, and a cocoon found In a 

 tree on James Island, have I seen it upon the adjoining islands, though 

 there seems no reason why it should not also occur all along the sea- 

 coast. 



Long Island is a low, narrow, uninhabited strip of land about five 

 miles southwest from Charleston, surrounded on all sides by creeks and 

 in the midst of a great salt marsh. The spiders are found in the for- 

 est, building their webs between trees and shrubs, sometimes within 

 reach, but more often ten or fifteen or even more feet from the ground 

 60 as to be reached by the sun. The web is very large, from three to 

 four feet in diameter, quite strong and very viscid ; its yellow color is 

 seen in the sunlight, or when the web is gathered into a mass. It is 

 composed of two kinds of silk, of which one is white or silver-gray, in- 

 elastic and perfectly dry ; the other is of a bright yellow or golden hue, 

 very elastic and studded with little globules of gum which render it 

 exceedingly adhesive ; the frame-work of the web, namely, the guy- 

 lines or stays and the diverging lines or spokes of the wheel-shaped 

 structure, is all composed of the former or silver colored, dry and in- 

 elastic silk, while the concentric circles which serve for entangling 

 the prey are composed of the latter, or golden, elastic and sticky silk; 

 these circles are very numerous, being generally less than one-third 

 of an inch apart, but for the further strengthening of so large a web, 

 between every eight or ten* such circles occurs one of the silver colored 

 silk ; these latter are made before the viscid lines, but neither of them 

 are in the web of this species spiral, as in the web described by Black- 

 wall and others, f on the contrary they seldom if ever, form complete 

 circles, but are looped and return in the opposite direction into a cor- 

 responding point at the other side of the web, leaving above the cen- 

 tre a space occupied only by radii tlirough which the spider can pass 

 to either surface of her web, the greater part of which, therefore, is 

 below the point where the radii converge, the dry lines are not de- 

 stroyed on the completion of the web, but remain and seem necessary 

 for its stability. 



As might be inferred from these facts this spider not only has the pow- 

 er of regulating the size of its thread, according as one or two, or three, 

 or four of its mammulae are pressed upon the surface from which the 

 line is to extend, or as a greater or less number of the spinnerules in 

 any mammula are employed ; but can also use in the construction of 

 its web, either the white or the yellow silk at will; for of its two prin- 

 cipal pairs of mammulse, one, the anterior, yields the yellow, while the 

 other or posterior pair yields the white silk. Of this I satisfied myself 



*The number varies according to the individual and even in different parts of the 

 same web. 

 t Zoological Journal, Vol. V., p. 181. 



