192 Dr. Heineken's Kntomolugical Notices. 



food so numerous and minute a progeny would be very great, I was 

 anxious to ascertain the mode in which it would be accomplished. On 

 the 10th August, 1827, a female Lycosa of a large, (an inch from man- 

 dibles to anus,) and to me new, species, which had long been kept con- 

 fined for other purposes, hatched a sac of eggs, and was soon completely 

 covered with young. The cage was so constructed that they could leave 

 it and return at all times, but that she could not. She had been, (as be- 

 fore stated,) long accustomed to the confinement and mode of feeding, and 

 from these circumstances, as well as not belonging to the class of web- 

 making Spiders, imprisonment seemed to interfere but little with her 

 natural habits. A fly was put in (the Spider having been fed as usual on 

 the preceding day) ; I watched until the whole was consumed. Not a 

 young one ever left its station on the mother, or seemed at all interested 

 in what was going forward. 15th. The young have never yet been seen 

 to quit the mother : she has been fed as usual, but in no instance have 

 they participated in the prey, altered their situations, or appeared in the 

 least excited while she was enge^ed with it. 21st. In every respect the 

 same. 25th (15 days from their birth). The young have quitted the 

 mother and escaped from the cage. 



To establish the fact of their having derived no nourishment in any 

 way from the parent during this period, I separated a colony on the 1 2th 

 and put them in a glass, with nothing more substantial than air to feed 

 upon. On the 24th, a lens could not detect any difference in size and 

 appearance between these and those which had been left with the mother. 

 After this period they began to die, and on the 31st one was seen preying 

 on another. Eventually one only remained, but I believe that many more 

 perished from starvation than by their fellow-prisoners. 



If I supposed that the " I have more than once been gratified by a 

 " sight of this interesting spectacle," &c. &c., (which concludes Messrs. 

 Kirby and Spence's account of the Lycosa, J applied to the mode of feed- 

 ing the young (of which there is no mention) , and not exclusively to their 

 " clustering about her,'' (which is especially noticed,) I should feel 

 bound in common courtesy to speak very diffidently about the opposite 

 result of my experiment, and in common justice to allow every reason- 

 able deduction from it on account of its having been a solitary one, (in 

 consequence of the difficulty of procuring the spider during the breeding 



