322 



AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWORK. 



Terri- 



telarian 



Tubes. 



turned upwards instead of downwards. (See Fig. 156, Chapter IX.) The 

 spider rests, as in the case of her congener, beneath her tent, and waits 

 for the prey that, striking upon and arrested by the labyrinth of crossed 

 lines stretched above, drop into the inverted silken bowl, beneath which 

 the watchful aranead hangs. Thus among the Linyphia, also, the Line- 

 weavers have fair representatives of that nest making habit which we 



have regarded as germinal and 

 typical of the nesting architect- 

 ure of all the tribes. 



Among the Territelarise the 

 tube making habit has a very 

 high development, par- 

 ticularly in the genera 

 Nemesia, Cteniza, and 

 Atypus. All these spi- 

 ders make tubular burrows be- 

 neath the surface of the ground, 

 which are lined with a thick 

 sheeting of silk that really con- 

 stitutes a tube within a tunnel. 

 (Fig. 301.) The genus Atypus 

 carries this tube above the sur- 

 face, attaching it, in the case of 

 Abbot's Atypus, 1 to the surface 

 of trees (Figs. 302, 303), while 

 Atypus piceus fastens her tube 

 to the surface of weeds and grass 

 into which or along which it is 

 carried. Thus we find that in 

 this large and interesting tribe 

 the tube is also made the archi- 



FIG. 304. The tubular, funnel shaped nest of Cyrtauchenius - , .. ... 



elongatus. Elevated above the ground, and suspended to tectural type of the domicile, 



grasses. The earth is opened to show a section view of The nest of CvrtaUcheniUS 

 the subterranean tube. (After Moggridge.) / 



elongatus, as described by M. 



Eugene Simon, closely resembles that of Agalena noevia in the character of 

 the tube alone; but this tube is enclosed within a deep cylindrical burrow, 

 and is prolonged upward for about three inches above the surface of the 

 ground, and enlarged into a funnel shape, so that it becomes from two to 

 three inches across at the orifice. (Fig. 304.) This aerial portion is snow 

 white, and at once attracts the eye, even from a considerable distance ; the 

 nests, rising up amid sparse grass, which serves to support but not conceal 

 them, present the appearance of scattered white fungi. Cyrtauchenius 



1 Atypus Abboti Walck. 



