THE TARANTULAS 133 



various parts of the United States. Several are known from the 

 Southeast, and one of these occurs rather commonly near Washing- 

 ton, D. C In 1886 George F. Atkinson studied a species in North 

 Carolina and, because of the singular means by which it closed its 

 burrow, called it a "folding-door tarantula." There are two equal 

 doors, each forming a half circle, which hang on semicircular 

 hinges; when closed, they meet in a straight line over the middle 

 of the hole. Each night the spider throws open its burrow, and each 

 morning closes the doors, as shown in Plate 16. On the method of 

 capturing its prey, Atkinson had the following to say: 



One evening I placed several ants in the jar containing the 

 nest. When an ant approached, so near the door as to send a 

 communication to the spider of its presence, the spider sprang 

 to the entrance, caught a door with the anterior legs on either 

 side, and pulled them nearly together, so that there was just 

 space enough left for it to see the ant when it crossed the open- 

 ing. When this happened, the spider threw the doors wide open, 

 caught the ant, and in the twinkling of an eye had dropped back 

 to the bottom of the tube with its game. This I saw repeated 

 several times during the months of January and February. 22 



Purse-Web Spiders. In the low hammocks of Georgia and 

 Florida lives one of the most remarkable members of the tarantula 

 fauna. It has received the common name of "purse-web" spider 

 from the resemblance its web bears to the silken purses so much 

 favored by ladies over a century ago. In 1792 John Abbot, eminent 

 entomologist and artist of Savannah, Georgia, first described the 

 tubes of the species that bears his name: "This singular species 

 makes a web like a money purse to the roots of large trees in the 

 hammocks or swamps, five or six inches out of the ground, fastened 

 to the tree, the other end in the ground about the same depth or 

 deeper. To the bottom of that part in the ground the spider retreats. 

 I imagine they come out and seek their food by night as I never 

 observed one out of its web. In November their young ones in vast 

 numbers cover the abdomen of the female and the abdomen then 

 appears very shrunk. The male is the smallest, but has the longest 

 nippers. Taken in March and is not common." 



Atypus abboti digs a deep burrow in the soil at the foot of a 



22 G. F. Atkinson, "Descriptions of Some New Trap-Door Spiders, Their 

 Notes and Food Habits," Entomologica Americana, Vol. 2 (1886), p. 116. 



