1899] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 27 



castle. In the construction of the tube damp earth facilitates 

 working materially, but being equal to the occasion the spider 

 can dig a tube in dry sand, requiring extra eflfort and a 

 good deal of ingenuity. The process is so simple, however, 

 when compared with the complicated mechanism used by one 

 contemplating sinking such a shaft on a large scale that it is 

 worthy of special note. In setting out to make the tube she 

 pro<?eeds with some slight variation in the following way : 

 Standing on tiptoe the spider moves her abdomen around 

 almost in a circle between her legs, touching the ground here 

 and there with the spinnerettes at the end of the body. The 

 silk pouring out catches fast in the soil, and in a moment an 

 adherent round flooring of about ten millimetere across is 

 formed. Then she turns about, digging up the little silk mat 

 entangled with sand, and in a twinkling has made it into a 

 parcel, which is laid to one side. Again she spins out silk over 

 the same spot and dexteroush' lifts up the mass, lays the pel- 

 let beside the preceding, until by repetitions she has tempo- 

 rarily encircled the newly-made pit with her internal diggings. 

 At times she stands head down in the hole and pats down 

 the new -formed mouth with her inverted abdomen. Within 

 an hour she is down the depth of her body and the hole exca- 

 vated sufiicienth' large to turn around in, but now each parcel 

 after being made is snapped from her mandibles with a sudden 

 motion of the palpi when up to the entrance. As she pro- 

 gresses the tube is lined with silk, often going over the surface 

 to prevent any caving in of the earth. Xow we find her tak- 

 ing a well-earned rest, and not until darkness is fully estab- 

 lished does she commence her castle. In vivarium I watched 

 spiders by artificial light under conditions quite natural. 

 Coming out of her tube I saw her grasp a prickly sphere of 

 burgrass, and taking it to the burrow she adjusted it to the 

 border of the opening. In a few moments she gathered two 

 more of the burs, one at a time placing them to form a partial 

 border ; the inter^■ening spaces between them were filled with 

 sand pellets, which she made and brought up from the inside 

 of the tube. Taking this to be the foundation of her future 

 castle, I took the opportunity of trying an experiment, that 

 is, of furnishing material. The ground, quite bare near her 

 tube, was strewn with a selection of short pieces of bleached 



