PREFACE. 



THE studies whose results are here given have been prosecuted 

 throughout the last sixteen years. I have largely limited my investiga- 

 tions to the habits and industry of spiders, as the matters which seemed 

 most important at this stage of scientific knowledge. 



None but the field naturalist can fully know and appreciate the diffi- 

 culties of my task. To these ordinary obstacles have been added special 

 hindrances of my own. The cabinet or laboratory student, with 

 A Field ^is pinned and alcoholic specimens, is largely independent of 



^ a ^ outward conditions; but he who studies nature as a living thing 

 ist s Dini- . . 



culties i g tne servan t of seasons, hours, moods. He must live amidst 



the life which he would see, and seize the opportunities as they 

 come, or lose his venture for that season or year, or perhaps wholly. The 

 duties of my calling in a large city have held me rigorously away from 

 the open country except during two months of the year. Summer vaca- 

 tions, and such leisure hours as a most busy life would allow, have been 

 given to the pleasant task of following my little friends of the aranead 

 world into their retreats, and watching at the doors of their fragile domi- 

 ciles for such secrets of their career as they might happen to uncover. 

 Occasional excursions at other times were unavoidably brief, and often 

 broken off at the point of promised discoveries. I have, in part, indeed, 

 overcome this obstacle by transporting and colonizing specimens, and by 

 directing the observations of others. But, at the best, artificial conditions 

 fall short of Nature's fullness, and no faithfulness of assistants can quite 

 equal personal investigations. 



Then, again, the natural disposition of the spider is a great hindrance 

 to the prosecution of field studies. It is a solitary and secretive animal, 



and the most ingenious device for winning its confidence is as 

 ^ , apt to drive it into hiding as to persuade it to revelations. In 

 Solitary * n ^ s res P ec ^ there is a great difference between these solitary 

 Nature, creatures and those sociable and demonstrative insects, the ants, 



whose life history I have heretofore been permitted to give to 

 the scientific world. The success which was readily obtained by spending 

 a few weeks or months encamped among formicaries of emmets, contin- 

 ually eluded me when trying like methods with araneads. 



