294 



AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWORK. 



margins to the sides and bottom of the box. (Fig. 288.) This formed the 

 cocoon tent, whose dimensions were two inches on the floor and along the 

 sides. June 13th, a small cluster of yellowish white spiderlings appeared 

 at the bottom of the cocoon, showing that the young had already hatched 

 and found their way outside within the intervening eighteen days. They 

 had then the appearance of having been hatched a day or two. 



During the ensuing week they gradually darkened in color and were 

 joined by their fellow broodlings, who gathered in a semicircle around the 

 upper edge of the cocoon on the box. Here they remained six days upon 

 the top of a case of drawers near an open window. While reading on 

 the evening of June 19th by the light of an argand burner, I glanced up- 

 ward and observed that the lamp was covered with web lines that fringed 



the bottom of the por- 

 celain shade and met- 

 al stand. Upon these 

 lines forty or fifty spi- 

 derlings hung, in the 

 full blaze of light. 

 They had evidently 

 just issued from the 

 cocoon tent, and had 

 been carried by the 

 wind along a bookcase 

 and across the desk to 

 the lamp, a total dis- 

 tance of fourteen feet. 

 A bridge line four feet 

 long was strung from 

 the bookcase to the 

 lamp, along which the brood had clambered, attracted undoubtedly by 

 the light. There was no reason why they should have sought that particu- 

 lar spot, and many reasons why they should have gone elsewhere, but the 

 light dominated their action. (See Volume I., Fig. 141.) 



A portion of these I removed to a table, where, during the night, they 

 set up a cobweb commons of the kind heretofore described, and remained 

 grouped thereon until next morning. Then they and nearly all their fel- 

 lows were dispersed by the breeze when the windows were opened. It thus 

 appeared that exposure to and the force of the wind determined the fact 

 of a quick and wide distribution of spiderlings immediately after egress. 

 In the case of the other broods that were protected from the effects of 

 strong winds, the young remained within a limited space for two or three 

 weeks. Most of them, gradually disappeared by aeronautic flight, mount- 

 ing in that way to the ceiling and walls; some of them spun small orbs 

 in the vicinity, and some remained upon the common web to the end. 



FIG. 288. Cocoon tent of Epeira sclopetaria. 



