THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Nos.l.i8&l49.] NOVEMBER, MDCCCLXXV. [Price Is. 



Trap-door Spiders in the Bark of Trees. By E. Newman. 



" It is now one hundred and sixteen years since Patrick 

 Browne gave an illustration, in his 'Civil and Natural History 

 of Jamaica,' p. 420, tab. 44, fig. 3, of the nest of a trap-door 

 spider, the first record of the kind with which I am acquainted 

 [published in London in 1756]. Seven years later the careful 

 observations of the Abbe Sauvages appeared [in the ' His- 

 toire de I'Acad. Royales des Sciences,' pp. 26 — 30, published 

 in Paris, 1763], in which he gave a very good description of 

 the nests of the 'Araignee ma9onne' (Nemesia caeraentaria), 

 which he discovered near Monlpellier, likening them to little 

 rabbit-burrows lined with silk, and closed by a tightly-fitting, 

 movable door. Kossi [in an article intituled, " Observatione 

 Insettologische," published in the'Meraorie di Matematica 

 et Fisica della Sociela Ilaliana,' vol. iv. 1778; and 'Fauna 

 Etrusca,' vol. ii. 1794] published an interesting account of the 

 nest and habits of a trap-door spider, which he had observed 

 in Corsica, and near Pisa; and from that time up to the present 

 day the curious dwellings of these creatures, many of which 

 have been discovered in warm climates, have continued to 

 attract the attention of naturalists." 



The foregoing extract is from a work intituled, 'Harvesting 

 Ants and Trap-door Spiders,' by J. Traherne Moggeridge, 

 part ii. p. 73. The mode in which these residences are con- 

 structed is admirably explained by Mr. Gosse, at page 115 of 

 his ' Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica.' Both these authors — 

 Mr. Moggeridge, alas ! is no more — are inimitable in their 

 graphic descriptions of the habits and manners of the living; 

 a science totally apart from the anatomical details of the 



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