Giiuies.—On the Habits of the Trap-door Spider. 2438 
action. They paused in this attitude for a little, and then suddenly in a 
moment, legs and fangs strike downwards, with all the celerity and force 
which the weight of the cephalo-thorax can impart. In fact you would be 
surprised to see with what force and quickness these tiny animals can 
strike. On one occasion I found in the bottom of a nest, the legs and hard 
case of a spider, and I have very little doubt, but that he was killed and 
eaten. An intelligent and trustworthy servant of mine, who has largely 
assisted me in digging out nests, etc., informs me that on one occasion he 
put two Trap-door Spiders together in a tin match-box, at night, and in 
the morning he found that the one had eaten the other,.as evidenced by the 
remnants of the cannibal feast, in the shape of legs and hard indigestible 
bits that wére left as the only memorials of the corpse of the departed one. 
They will frequently show fight, and strike at you, when digging out their 
nests. There is no difficulty, however, in securing them as they never run 
away, and are not quick in their movements. ven when placed on a bare 
table, they will only run quickly for a few inches, and then stop, their style 
of running being jerky, and by fits and starts. The only difficulty is in 
digging out their nests without injury, as from their sinuous character, you 
never know which direction they will take. I always found it best to sound 
the depth of any nest, by passing a straw down, and then by observing the 
way I had to turn the straw in order to get it past the bends, I could 
estimate the general direction taken by it. I then dug a deep trench on the 
side from which this general direction tended, till I was sure that I was 
below the bottom of the nest, and then with a knife, carefully scraped away 
the exposed face of the sod till I came upon the nest, and in this way got a 
vertical section displayed without injury, and after that it was an easy 
matter to know where and how to dig, so as to secure the whole complete. 
But even then you will find it a difficult matter to preserve the sod from 
breaking, and at the same time secure it in a sufficiently portable form for 
carrying a mile or two. I generally found it best to leave the sod with the 
nest in it, exposed to the sun where it was dug out, till it was somewhat 
dried and hardened. All this takes considerable time and labour, and you 
will be astonished how large an excavation is necessary to get one large 
nest out complete. 
Mainly nocturnal, but not always. 
I believe with Moggridge, that these spiders are mainly nocturnal in 
their habits, as when I confined any of them in tin match-boxes at night, I 
could hear them moving about and making a sort of clicking noise, proba- 
bly caused by trying to dig through the tin with their mandibles, but I 
never heard any noise or movement during the day time. But contrary to 
his experience of the Mediterranean species, I have frequently seen them 
