of the proprietor ; while in a fifth, the bottom was filled to 

 the depth of twenty millimetres or more with numerous insects 

 mino'led with sand, amono- which I could distino-uish five or six 

 Carabidae of different species, other beetles and a sand-wasp. 

 These remains were always buried in the sand, never lying 

 loose upon the surface ; from their nature, as well as from the 

 increasing size of the tubes in passing downward, it would seem 

 as if most, though certainly not all, of the insects eaten had 

 fallen into the tube. Judging from the number of spiders seen 

 outside their holes, and from the sluggishness at night of spec- 

 imens I had imprisoned for some time, the spiders are appar- 

 ently diurnal, and not nocturnal. 



On teasing one of these spiders with a straw moved up and 

 down gently in its hole, and at the same time gradually with- 

 drawn, the spider may be made to come very near the surface 

 of the ground, but in no instance did I succeed in coaxing one 

 within sight. »While poking at one, a little fellow in a tube about 

 a couple of decimeters off came up to the top of his burrow, 

 evidently to see what all the disturbance was about, and re- 

 mained crouching, so that the front of his head and his bent legs 

 were just on a level with the ground. When one is removed 

 from its hole it will feign death, but when put at bay it shows a 

 vicious ferocity ; raising the whole anterior part of its body, 

 with jaws wide apart and front legs threateningly raised, it will 

 jump at objects thrust near it, and strike them forcibly and 

 repeatedly with its fangs. 



As already remarked, I kept several of these spiders for a 

 time. One of them was a female I had dug out of her hole at 

 Coatue, with about twenty young on her back; these mostly ad- 

 hered to her abdomen, but at times ran all over her, even upon 

 the smooth surface of her denuded cephalothorax. Occasion- 

 ally they would leave the mother* wander about and then 

 return ; jarring the vessel in which they were kept did not dis- 

 turb them, whether on or off their mother's back, nor could I 

 induce them by any device to return to their mother before 

 they chose. It is plain that they leave the mother early and 

 immediately make burrows for themselves, for I found living in 

 minute tubes spiders no larger than those still remaining upon 



