528 DECEPTION. 



conceals them by ' a skilful and adroit piece of deception,' 

 whereby ' bold imitation of prominent and noticeable fea- 

 tures of the surface landscape ' prevents either nest or 

 entrance being observed. ' The evidences of thought, inge- 

 nuity and reason are displayed in the selection of the parti- 

 cular materials used in special places ; in the calculation of 

 the probabilities of certain contingencies happening ; and in 

 the apparently careless arrangement of both living and dead 

 matter, so as to make what is in reality the highest art appear 

 to be the result of natural and ordinary circumstances.' 



In some cases there is ' a plant of green grass .... planted 

 artificially, and growing on the lid.' In other cases 'you 

 will find clay on the outside of the lid, plastered and smooth, 

 or possibly with an imitation crack, introduced apparently at 

 random.' In others, again, 'the skilful artist brings to his 

 aid all the taste and knowledge of the practical gardener 

 selects plants suited for his purpose, brings them from a dis- 

 tance, and actually transplants them to the top of his trap- 

 door with astonishingly natural variety and arrangement.' 

 Or 'you will find mosses of various hues and colours growing 

 green, and sometimes brown and dead upon the lid.' Or 

 sometimes ' this tiny pasture is brilliantly ornamented with 

 parti-coloured patches of lichens.' Or ' sprigs of lycopods, 

 ferns or heath, veronicas, and white-berry plants are intro- 

 duced to correspond with the bolder herbage around ; ' or, 

 6 if the common white tussock is the prevailing vegetation 



in the locality the dead bits (of that kind) of grass 



are woven adroitly into the trap-door or round its mouth, so 

 as to deceive the most practised eye.' 



' So, too, where roots or woody fibres, or bits of dead 

 stick, are scattered over the ground, or protrude from the 

 soil, this clever imitator will repeat the conditions on his lid, 

 weaving these hard, foreign, and often clumsy materials into 

 his trap-door in an irregular and apparently undesigned 



way - Hard seeds, and anything whatever covering 



the ground are reproduced in their natural attitudes in these 

 clever pieces of deception. In fact, you will never find any 

 two trap-doors exactly the same, even in any one locality and 

 belonging to the same colony of spiders, except where surface 



