66 PECKHAM. [Vol. 1. 



abdomen, when it instantly curled up its legs and dropped like 

 dead to the ground. * * * j have counted as many as 

 twenty spiders in a single cell, and there are seldom less than 

 three cells together, and sometimes as many as eight or ten." * 



On the wasps of South America, in their relation to spiders, 

 I will also quote from a letter written by Mr. Herbert Smith f 

 in answer to some questions about the enemies of spiders. 



" In my opinion, the chief enemies of spiders in the tropics 

 are Hymenoptera. The solitary wasps are far more numerous 

 than here ; some of the larger Pompilidfe provision their nests 

 with Mygale, but commonly take great numbers of small 

 Epeiridse, Attida3, etc. Some of my best specimens of spiders 

 were obtained from wasps' nests, though the wasps have an 

 unpleasant habit of cutting off all the spiders' legs." 



To come nearer home, Hentz, in the United States, found 

 about forty spiders in one tube of Sphex cyanea. J He says 

 that these wasps commonly enclose from twenty to forty spiders 

 in their nests. § 



Mrs. Treat has also noticed that wasps make war upon a 

 large spider, T. tigrina, which lives in a hole which it excavates 

 in the ground. She had at one time twenty-eight spiders of 

 this species under observation. She writes : "In August the 

 digger-wasp is making sad havoc among these spiders. She 

 wants them to feed her young, and nothing but this particular 

 species will do ; and woe now to all spiders with unclosed doors, 

 for she is sure to find them. * * * She runs over the ground 

 swiftly, peering here and there, until she alights upon an open 

 burrow, down which she speedily goes, and soon comes out 

 dragging her victim, which she has paralyzed with her power- 

 ful sting. * * Toward the end of August out of the twenty- 

 eight spiders only five are left."|| 



* Angola and the River Congo, p. 324. 



't Kuthox oi Brazil, the Amazons and the Coast. 



I Spiders of the United States, p. 122. 

 %Ibid,p.l5i. 



II Home Studies in Nature, p. 82. 



