COCOON LIFE AND BABYHOOD. 



241 



Young 



Dolo- 



medes. 



On June llth, one week after the hatching of the young Lycosids, one 

 hundred had abandoned the maternal perch and were dispersed over the 

 inner surface of the jar and upon a series of lines stretched from side to 

 side. About half as many more remained upon the mother's back, but 

 by the 1.3th, two days thereafter, all had dismounted. In the meantime 

 they had increased in size at least half, apparently without food. 1 



One summer, at the steamboat landing of Lake Saratoga, New York, 

 between the platform and the logs driven as piles to protect it, I observed 

 a large nest of interlacing lines within which hung a round co- 

 coon from half to three-fourths of an inch in diameter. Imme- 

 diately beneath the cocoon many young spiders were massed in 

 colony, hanging inverted, in the usual posture, from the crossed 

 lines of the maze. These were 

 the little fellows who had been 

 hatched within the swinging 

 egg bag, and who had doubt- 

 less issued therefrom within 

 the last week or ten days. At 

 least, they were so well grown 

 that they might have been of 

 that age. 



The cocoon was so evi- 

 dently of the Lycosid charac- 

 ter that I was for a moment 

 perplexed to find it in such 

 a position. But, remembering 

 the habit of Dolomedes, I in- 

 ferred that this may have been 

 the cocoon nest of one of the 

 large Dolomede spiders that 

 frequent the borders of our 

 American lakes and other wa- 

 ters. I captured some of the 



Fiu. 263. View of Dolomede cocoon in site, and part of the 

 brood hanging to the supporting lines. 



young spiders, with some diffi- 

 culty however, for they were 

 old and active enough to scamper away upon the least agitation of the 

 snare. An examination showed that they were young Dolomedes, proba- 

 bly Dolomedes tenebrosus, a spider that attains great size under favor- 

 able circumstances. No doubt, the mother had carried her cocoon along 

 the shore, hiding among rocks or underneath the platform of the boat 

 landing, until Nature prompted her to the last action characteristic of her 



Acail. N;it. Sri., Phila., 1884, page 138, "How Lycosi fulirii-uti's her round 



