392 Mr. F. Enock on the 



that this representative of the marvellous trap-door 

 spiders is well worthy of the relationship. 



In Blackwall's * Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland,' 

 p. 15, I find it stated that the female Atyjms deposits 

 between thirty and forty eggs, &c., hut, so far as my 

 experience goes, this is considerably under the number, 

 for whenever I have dug a tube containing young I 

 always made a point of carefully counting them. My 

 first capture was made October 29th, 1876, at night ; I 

 dug up a large tube containing a female and 129 young. 

 February 31st, 3877, female and 157 young; this tube 

 was nearly eleven inches long. September 25th, 1877, 

 a female and 143 young; besides a great many other 

 family tubes, in every one of which there w^ere over 100 

 young. 



On August 1st, 1877, I dug up a tube, ten inches long 

 (example), from half to five-eighths of an inch in 

 diameter for about six inches and a half down then 

 widening out into a sort of pouch, containing something 

 hard, which I at first imagined was a male. I carefully 

 cut a slit across the tube, enabling me to see that it was 

 the cocoon of eggs suspended in a beautiful hammock of 

 silk, one inch long, the flat ends of which were about 

 three-sixteenths wide, attached to the top and bottom 

 of the pouch. I also found another tube the same date, 

 containing an unfinished cocoon of eggs. Sept. 1st, 

 1879, another, which I carefully replaced. 



Sept. 25th, 1879, a short tube containing female and 

 young ; these latter were quite white, evidently only 

 just hatched, many of them being very feeble and 

 scarcely awake. I dug another tube, in which the 

 young seemed to be a few days older. 



The following are a few of the dates when I found 

 tubes with female and young : — Sept. 13th, 1881 ; Sept. 

 25th, 1877 ; Sept. 26th, 1879 ; Oct. 3rd, 1884 ; Oct. 6th, 

 1879 ; Oct. 6th, 1883 ; Oct. 29th, 1876 ; Nov. 1st, 1877 ; 

 March 31st, 1877 ; and April 5th, 1879. I consider the 

 last two rather late, but I find that we had wet weather 

 in ]\tarch, 1877, and a heavy fall of snow March 25th, 

 1879 ; no doubt keeping the young back. 



April 2nd, 1876, 1 found a number of young Atyjn 

 wandering about on some wild sage, their silken threads 

 crossing and recrossing from twig to twig. They were 

 passing along these threads ; all seemed inclined to get 



