TAILORING ANIMALS 



maternal egg-nest or cocoon a home-tent in which the 

 mother Hves, and, later on, her young occupy it. This 

 is a curved tent or tube, or a thick, hollow mass of flossy 

 silk, which envelops the eggs. One sees good examples 

 of these in the maternal industry of oiu' saltigrade or 

 jumping spiders. 



Among foreign spiders an interesting example is that 

 of a Venezuelan Theridioid described by M. Eugene 

 Simon as Anelosimus socialis. Many hundreds of this 

 species spin a common web, soft and transparent, but 

 of a compact tissue like that of our familiar speckled 

 tube -weaver (Agalena noevia), whose funnel-shaped 

 snares are among the most common natural objects on 

 American lawns, lanes, and roadsides. At first sight it 

 appears more like the work of social caterpillars than of 

 spiders. The interior is divided into regular lodges by 

 silken partitions. The egg-cocoons are flocculent balls 

 fixed to the common web by threads that form a soft 

 net. This colonial tent attains immense dimensions, 

 even enveloping an entire coffee-tree. 



It seems a long step from the spider, with her silk- 

 sewn tent and satin-stitched enswathements for her 

 young, to the larvae of moths and other insects. But 

 the step is a natural one from the stand-points of both 

 structure and habit. A spider is an insect larva in a 

 lower stage of advancement, or one should say, perhaps, 

 in a different stage of transformation. The aranead 

 original has been transformed into the spider, dropping 

 many characteristics, but carrying with it the spinning 

 function among others retained. This has been highly 

 developed and made permanent. It may be due to the 

 latter quality that the thread-making and manipulating 

 organs have been transferred from the head, as is com- 



205 



