314 



AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWORK. 



The same aranead, when building on the seashore, will show intelligent 

 adaptation in the use of the material at hand. I have often found her 

 burrow, when dug within the sand, with a course or two of small quartz 

 pebbles laid around the rim, upon which, as a sort of foundation, the usual 

 chimney or turret of straws would be raised. 



If one will thrust a twig down the burrow, which goes straight down- 

 ward six, eight, or ten inches, and will dig away the sand on either side, 

 he will see the delicate silken lining of the burrow clinging to the twig, 

 as shown at Fig. 290. It is a delicate fabric, with whose strands the 



grains of sand are interblend- 

 ed. But it serves, .in part, to 

 keep the tube intact. 



Lycosa carolinensis con- 

 structs from the needle like 

 leaves of the white pine (as 

 in the cut Fig. 291), or from 

 other available material, by 

 bending and pasting, domi- 

 ciles which more closely re- 

 semble birds' nests than any- 

 thing that I have met in ara- 

 nead architecture. These are 

 pasted together by a process 

 not unlike a rude sort of 

 basket weaving. In this case, 

 also, one must assume a delib- 

 erate and intelligent action on 

 the part of the spider. 



The selection of the pine 

 needles as they lie scattered 

 over the field ; 



FIG. 289. The Turret spider's nest. The earth is represented 

 cut away, to show the burrow. 



A Basket 

 Weaver. 



the nest site ; ar- 



ranging them in the little fasciculse or bundles which may be seen in the 

 cut (Fig. 291) ; the bending of these into place to form the basket like 

 vestibule or dome above the burrow all these actions, not to speak of 

 others, imply a process of selection and adaptation more or less deliberate 

 and intelligent. 1 



On the contrary, in studying the nests of Orbweavers and noting their 

 manner of constructing them, one cannot escape the conviction that chance 

 has had quite as much to do as design in the outcome of some of the 

 beautiful forms illustrated in the foregoing chapter. It is in the act of 



1 The nest of Carolinensis from which the figure has heen drawn was contributed to 

 my collection by Mrs. Treat, and was made by a New England spider. 



