Gitties.—On the Habits of the Trap-door Spider. 251 
the bottom of its nest, all woven together. Hoping that some further work 
was going on, either in the way of making a trap-door for the old hole, or 
digging out a new entrance through the sod in some other place, I left it “i 
quite undisturbed for some weeks, only laying down some flies and moths 
occasionally, which, however, I never found touched. Nothing further, 
however, appeared outside, and I became pretty sure that either the spider 
had buried itself alive or had escaped. I had wished Captain Hutton to 
see it, but his absence from town prevented me doing anything further till 
the 8th of May, when I examined it, first of all by cutting open the nest 
where it had been repaired. I then found that the nest had been deepened 
by about an inch, or rather that the materials which had been used in mend- 
ing the side of the nest had been taken out of the bottom. In the bottom 
I found four young ones dried and dead, and this made me sure that 
-the old one must still be in the nest. Accordingly I passed a straw 
down the hole from the top, when I found that about half-way down, 
it was stopped by something, and after cutting away a little more 
of the nest I soon found the dried body of the old spider in a 
hollow in the nest, at a bend about half-way up. It was shrunk and 
shrivelled up, but quite perfect, showing that it had literally starved itself 
to death. I found the body of a blue-bottle fly in the nest, dried also, but 
with the head off it. From this and other instances—which I shall refer 
to presently—of nests sealed up from the inside, containing sometimes dead 
and sometimes living spiders, it is perfectly clear to me that the spider 
deliberately sealed its nest and starved itself and its young to death. It 
evidently could not bear to leave its home, or it would have done so easily 
at any time with its young. The partial marring of its handiwork seemed 
to have so disheartened it that it sealed itself up in its own ruined house— 
a broken-hearted architect and builder. The nest from the surface of the 
ground to the bottom is exactly eight and a quarter inches, and has several 
bends in it. 
Sealed-up Nests. 
I come now to refer to a fact, in connection with the habits of these 
spiders, which I may as well say at once is to me totally inexplicable. 
have not seen it referred to in any way, by any of the observers who have 
recorded their experiences, and I should have hesitated to mention it now, 
were it not that so many instances of it came under my notice, as to pre- 
clude the idea altogether of accident as an explanation. I refer to the fact 
alluded to above, that the spider is sometimes found in her nest with her 
trap-door sealed-up from the inside, with no means whatever of ingress or 
egress, and yet with the outside of her door covered over with clay or soil, 
plastered over and sealed up as it were, implying the absolute necessity of 
