MATERNAL INSTINCTS : MOTHERHOOD. 201 



adopt the shot in place of the cocoon. The fact that the spider will carry 

 about so comparatively heavy an object as a lead shot instead of its cocoon 

 certainly argues a poorly developed muscular sense. 1 Sir John Lubbock 

 appears to have made some experiments in the line marked out by the 

 Peckhams, as a result of which he concludes that examples of Lycosa 

 saccata did not appear to recognize their own bags of eggs, but were equal- 

 ly happy if they were interchanged. 2 



A gravid female of Argiope cophinaria sent to me enclosed in a paper 

 box was found dead, having left an unfinished cocoon. She was cling- 

 ing to one end of a thick patch of white spinningwork that 

 Covering q u jte enclosed a small tuft of fern leaves, at the other end of 

 E g which was a roll of purple swathing, corresponding with a 

 purple pad of a complete cocoon. I expected to find the eggs 

 within this roll, but was surprised upon opening it to see a yellowish 

 ball of silk, and nothing more. Where the eggs should have been was 

 only a round silken wad. Nevertheless, the expiring energy of the spider 

 had been spent in spinning a protecting cover around this mock egg 

 mass. 



An anonymous observer 3 records somewhat similar cases. He found 

 one Cophinaria cocoon in which there were no eggs, and another con- 

 taining but three. The eggs were on some boards beneath the cocoon 

 site, having fallen from the first receptacle before they were covered. In 

 each 'case the mother went on with her work and carefully finished the 

 eggless flask. If the loss was discovered the knowledge made no differ- 

 ence in the exercise of her maternal functions, which, apparently, were 

 controlled by an instinct or feeling quite independent of knowledge. 



A like example of mental abstraction (if one may be allowed such a 

 phrase) was reported to me by Mrs. Mary Treat as having occurred at Vine- 

 land, New Jersey, with a large Florida Dolomede spider, probably 

 Dolomedes tenebrosus Hentz. This mother, after the habit of 

 j - . , her genus, carried her cocoon under her jaw, but sometimes 

 shifted it to a position beneath the abdomen. Yet there were 

 no eggs in the cocoon a fact which thus came about: When first caught 

 the Dolomede was confined in a tin can, which so surprised or frightened 

 her out of her maternal propriety that she deposited her eggs in the 

 can without attempting to protect them with a cocoon. She was removed 

 to a natural environment upon the ground, whereupon she spun a web 

 and gathered up sundry materials, which she managed to make into the 

 form of a cocoon, which, with this species, is a round sac about the size 

 of a boy's playing marble. This she hugged to her body and lugged 

 about with as zealous care as though it were filled with eggs. 



1 Mental Powers of Spiders, pages 417-^19. 



2 On the Senses, Instincts, and Intelligence of Animals, Sir John Lubbock, page 179. 



3 "Katydid," Chicago Tribune, September llth, 1881. 



