BURROWS OF HAMSTER AND MYGALE. 531 
of extreme elegance; and no one can watch the labours of a 
common garden spider, as, for instance, the Epeira diadema 
(fig. 269), without being struck with the marvellous sagacity 
which it displays in the execution of its work, and the per¬ 
fection with which its web is constructed. 
699. An equally curious instinct is often displayed in the 
construction of the habitations which the animal designs for 
its abode. Thus the 
Hamster (fig. 270), a 
small rodent animal 
allied to the Eat, which 
is met with in most 
cultivated districts on 
the Continent from 
Alsace to Siberia, and 
which is very injurious 
to agriculture, con¬ 
structs a burrow in the 
soil which has always two openings,—-one in an oblique direc¬ 
tion, which serves the animal for casting out the earth it has 
dug away,—the other perpendicular, which is the passage by 
which it enters and makes its exit. These galleries lead to 
a regular series of circular excavations, which communicate 
with each other by horizontal passages ; one of these cavities, 
furnished with a bed of dried herbage, is the abode of the 
Hamster; while the others serve as magazines for the pro¬ 
visions which it collects in large quantities. 
700. There are certain Spiders known to Zoologists under 
the name of My gale , which perform operations analogous to 
those of the Hamster, but still more complicated; for not 
only do they excavate in the ground a large and commodious 
habitation, but they line it with a silken tapestry, and 
furnish it with a door regularly hung upon a hinge (fig. 271). 
For this purpose, the Mygale digs, in a clayey soil, a sort of 
cylindrical pit, about 3 or 4 inches in length; and plasters 
its walls with a kind of very consistent mortar. It then 
constructs, of alternate layers of earth, and of threads woven 
into a web, a trap-door exactly adapted to the orifice of its 
hole, and only capable of opening outwards; and it attaches 
this by a hinge of the same thread to the tapestried lining of 
its chamber. The outside of this trap-door is covered with 
