78 Life and Immortality. 



beating a precipitate retreat out of the lower end of her 

 funnel and soon is lost beneath the mesh of enveloping and 

 interlacing grasses. 



Where favorably located, these webs remain through the 

 entire season, and are enlarged, as the spider grows, by addi- 

 tions on the outer edges, and are supported by threads run- 

 ning up into the neighboring plants. Sometimes the webs 

 are built in close proximity to a stone partially imbedded in 

 the earth, the bottom of the funnel opening slightly under- 

 neath the stone, which secures to the spider a convenient 

 harbor in case of threatening danger. 



Agalenidae, as our funnel-web weavers are called, are 

 long-legged, brown spiders, in which the head part of the 

 cephalo-thorax is higher than the thoracic part, and dis- 

 tinctly separated from it by grooves or marks at the sides. 

 The eyes are usually in two rows, but in Agalena the middle 

 eyes of both rows are much higher than the others. The 

 feet have three claws, and the posterior pairs of spinnerets 

 are two-jointed and usually longer than the others. Agalena 

 n<zvia y the technical name of our Common Grass Spider, 

 abounds in all parts of the United States, but its very com- 

 monness is the principal reason why it is so little known 

 except by the trained naturalist, its very familiarity leading 

 the average man and woman to look upon it with contempt. 



Persons unfamiliar with spiders find it difficult to dis- 

 tinguish the young from the old, and male from female. This 

 is caused, in part, by the great differences between different 

 ages and sexes of the same spider, on account of which they 

 are supposed to belong to distinct species. The adult males 

 and females, however, are easily distinguished from each other, 

 and from the young, by the complete development of organs 

 peculiar to each sex, the palpal organs on the ends of the 

 palpi in the males, and the epigynum, a hard swollen place 

 just in front of the opening of the ovaries in the females. 

 Usually the males are smaller than their partners, and have, in 

 proportion to their size, smaller abdomens and longer legs. 



