A LIVING BOLT 



they can offer is very considerable. Mr. Moggridge says, 

 " Many a time when I have wished to raise the lid to drop 

 in flies or other food, I have been obliged to desist because 

 the bending blade of my penknife showed that I should 

 injure the nest if I used greater force. 11 Nemesia ccementaria^ 

 a native of Southern Europe, is very courageous and deter- 

 mined in this respect. On the left side of our picture (p. 30) 

 you will see a representation of one of these spiders inside 

 her nest, which is an excellent example of the " cork " type. 

 She has taken alarm at the commotion going on outside her 

 front door, and has taken up her post in readiness to guard 

 her home. Around her are assembled her children, for like 

 some other animals, though the spider is incapable of living in 

 harmony with her mate and can scarcely bring herself to toler- 

 ate his society, she may be an excellent mother, and it is no 

 uncommon circumstance to find in the nest of a trap-door 

 spider a number of little ones sometimes over forty, at 

 others only two or three. 



Around the margin of a cork lid, just inside the bevelled 

 part, there is often a neat row of tiny holes which occur in 

 pairs, and look as though they had been made with a needle. 

 In the part next the hinge there are no holes, but they are 

 found at intervals along the remainder of the circumference 

 of the lid, just as they appear on the open lid of a nest near 

 the left of our picture. These are the holes in which the 

 spider has placed her claws and fangs when holding on to 

 the door, and the arrangement enables her to obtain a very 

 firm grip. A nest in the possession of Mr. Gosse had needle 

 holes in the side of the tube as well as in the lid, and there 

 seems to be little doubt that the spider sometimes takes 

 hold of the door with some of her feet and clings tightly 

 to the wall of the burrow with the others, thus resisting still 

 more effectively any intrusion into her stronghold. 



26 



