BURROWS OF HAMSTER AND MYGALE. 531 
of extreme elegance ; and no one can watch the labours of a 
pommon garden spider, as, for instance, the Epeira diadema 
(fig. 269), without being struck with the marvellous sagacity 
which it displays in the execution of its work, and the per- 
fection with which its web is constructed. 
699. An equally curious instinct is often displayed in the 
construction of the habitations which the animal designs for 
is abode. Thus the 3 
ied tothe Rat,which 
is met with in most 
cultivated districts on 
to agriculture, con- Pig. 270.—Hamster. 
tructs a burrowin the 
oil which has always two openings,—one in an oblique diree- 
lion, which serves the animal for casting out the earth it has 
dug away,—the other perpendicular, which is the passage by 
hich it enters and makes its exit. These galleries lead to 
regular series of circular excavations, which communicate 
ith each other by horizontal passages ; one of these cavities, 
furnished with a bed of dried herbage, is the abode of the 
amster ; while the others serve as magazines for the pro- 
isions which it collects in large quantities. 
_ 700. There are certain Spiders known to Zoologists under 
the name of Mygale, which perform operations analogous to 
those of the Hamster, but still more complicated ; for not 
nly do they excavate in the ground a large and commodious 
abitation, but they line it with a silken tapestry, and 
fornish it with a door regularly hung upon a hinge (fig. 271). 
for this purpose, the Mygale digs, in a clayey soil, a sort of 
ylindrical pit, about 3 or 4 inches in length ; and plasters 
Ms walls with a kind of very consistent mortar. It then 
onstructs, of alternate layers of earth, and of threads woven 
9 a web, a trap-door exactly adapted to the orifice of its 
dle, and only capable of opening outwards ; and it attaches 
s by a hinge of the same thread to the tapestried lining of 
chamber. The outside of this trap-door is covered with 
