144 



AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWORK. 



After an absence of a half hour I returned to find that in the interval 

 the spider had oviposited upon the central part of the cushion, and was 

 then engaged in covering the hemispherical egg mass with a silken 

 envelope, working like a mason spreading mortar with a trowel. 



Unluckily, at this stage of work I had to leave for an imperative en- 

 gagement, and did not see my spider again for an hour and a half, when 

 I was delighted to find a round silken ball dangling from the 



apex of lier abdomen ' hel(1 fast b y short threads to the s P in - 



nerets. The cushion, however, had disappeared. It is not dif- 

 ficult to explain the intervening process. Within this circular cushion the 

 eggs are deposited, after which act the spider proceeds to pull the edges of 

 the cushion together until the whole is rolled around the egg mass, after 

 the fashion of a schoolboy putting a leathern covering on a yarn ball. This 

 done, the mother goes over the exterior of the ball, and spreads upon it an 

 outer layer of spinningwork, which is woven in the same manner as the 



Fin. 175. The cocooning burrow of Lycosa saccata, made underneath a stone. The walls of mingled silk 

 and soil. This figure shows the nest as exposed when the stone was removed. Fm. 176. The stone 

 under which the burrow of Fig. 175 was made. The under part of the stone is shown turned upward. 



original cushion. Thereupon she attaches it to her spinnerets, where it is 

 carried until the young are hatched. I had often wondered how the round 

 egg ball of the Lycosid was put together, and the mechanical ingenuity and 

 simplicity of the method were now apparent. The period consumed in 

 the whole act of cocooning was less than four hours, and the act of ovi- 

 positing took less than half an hour. Shortly after the egg sac was fin- 

 ished the mother cut her way out of the silken cover woven over her 

 little cavern. She had evidently thus secluded herself for the purpose of 

 spinning her cocoon. This was in accord with a firmly fixed habit of the 

 Lycosids to exclude themselves, before making their cocoons, in a burrow 

 or cave which they form in the ground. This is often made under a stone 

 and is protected on the sides by a plastered wall of mud, and above against 

 the stone by a piece of spinningwork which thus forms an upholstered 

 roof to this pretty, cavernous home. An approach to the cave is cut, which 

 often debouches among the grasses, clumps of clovei\ mosses, or wild flow- 



