182 Miscellaneous. 
perbaps, had been purposely massed by the spider. However that 
may be, the ball was utilized as a nest ; its centre had been pierced, 
a spherical cavity formed by silk-lining the interior, which was 
entered by a circular door bound around the edge by spinning-work. 
This quaint domicile was pendent from one of the strong upper 
foundation-lines ; and herein the spider rested, while the emmet car- 
penters worked away above her, and continually dropped chips upon 
the roof of her den, and the orb beneath, until one side of the snare 
was quite covered with them, In this case the position of the nest, as 
well as its form, was exceptional, as the nest-site of H. stria is well 
nigh invariably beyond the limits of the web, sometimes, indeed, 
several feet. In these points the spider was evidently led to an 
intelligent variation of her nest-building by circumstances. 
5. Another variation, or rather a series of variations, was noted 
upon the side of Brush Mountain, at Bellwood, Pennsylvania. 
Several young pine trees had been cut away and tossed from the 
mountain tothe banks of the Juniata river below. The foliage had 
withered and fallen from the boughs, whose branches stretched out 
dry and bare; and among them a‘colony of young furrow-spiders 
had. pitched their tents and spread their snares. One specimen 
happened to spin her web near the axil of several goodly sized 
branches, which were formed into a natural shelter by the inverted 
position of the bough. The spider had recognized this vantage, and 
made her nest at the point of junction, or rather took shelter there, 
for there was very little artificial nesting beyond a faint tissue 
spread over the bark at the point where she sat. 
A second specimen had lodged at a point near the tip of a small 
branch whose delicate dry twigs gave no sufficient shelter, and, 
besides, were directed upward. Accordingly a silken tube, funnel- 
shaped, was spun between the twigs, within which the young 
spider nested. 
A third spider, lodged in a similar site, had made a silken sack 
for a tent, whose mouth had apparently originally opened directly 
towards the snare. Buta saltigrade spider had fastened a parasitic 
tubular nest upon one side of this sack ; and accordingly the mouth 
was found closed and the door shifted to the opposite side, as though 
to avoid interference with a troublesome neighbour. 
A fourth individual had woven a simple silken cover or screen, 
behind which she lodged. A fifth had pitched her tent upon a stray 
leaf, beneath which a similar cover, a small rectangular piece of silk 
canvas (suggestive of the military bivouac or “‘ dog tent”) was 
stretched by lines attached to the sides and corners, and fastened to 
the leaf-surfaces and surroundings. Between this sheet and the 
leaf the spider was ensconced, having the usual bridge-line connexion 
with the orb. 
6. Two of the above colony had established nests in tufts of a 
parasitic moss fastened upon the dead limbs. One of these was 
very pretty and ingenious. The moss grew in a bunch about the 
size of a hickory-nut; this was pierced at the top, and the filaments 
pushed aside sufficiently to allow an interior cavity large enough to 
house a spider. An oval door or opening was formed near the top 
by. bending and binding back the fibres of the plant. A secure and 
