256 Transactions.—Zoology. 
refer to is on the 28th November, when, in the evening, I cut out the very 
beautiful trap-door No. 1. On cutting it out with a knife, I founda smaller 
hole, close to the hole belonging to the trap-door, and, thinking it might be a 
double-nest, as I could find no lid corresponding to the small hole, I dug 
both carefully out. The small tube had no connection with the larger one, 
Lam at a loss to know how ingress or egress from it is managed. At the 
bottom of the larger tube (the one, of which I have the door), I found the 
spider herself, and after, with considerable force, pulling her out of her hole 
with a pair of forceps, I found a lot of young ones packed close and hard 
on the bottom of the hole, and she had been squatted firmly over them. I 
secured them all, I think numbering twenty. She and her progeny are in 
the small-necked phial alone (labelled No. 11). Below the young ones was 
a mass débris of insect (beetles especially), and below that, the brown fibrous 
matter so often observed before. The hole had a horizontal bend at first 
into the bank, and then went straight down, and was not more than eight 
inches deep. It was the same width from top to bottom, and had no wide 
part for eggs or young ones. So that what I observed at the Bobbin, in this 
respect, does not hold good at the Stable Gully. 
Débris in bottom of Nests. 
You will have noticed that, several times in these notes, I aan referred 
to my having found masses of fibrous matter, and the remains of insects, in 
the bottom of the nests. It is unnecessary that I should more particularly 
refer to this, as it bears on the question of their food, and on this subject, 
Moggridge—the best authority on these spiders—says (page 135) :—‘ More 
observations of this kind are greatly wanted, as it is most important that 
we should know what are the principal sources of food upon which these 
spiders depend for their existence. If we could answer the questions, 
What do they eat ? and, what do they fear ? we should have advanced a long 
way towards solving the larger problem as to the causes which limit particu- 
lar species to certain districts. For there seems every probability that other 
new types of nests remain to be detected in warm climates, some of which 
may perhaps exceed those we have been here studying in beauty of work- 
manship and adaptation ; it is at least certain that an abundant harvest of 
interesting facts in the life history of Trap-door Spiders remains yet to be 
gathered in.” Now, curiously enough, this very question of food is one in 
which my experience has been quite different from that of all other observ- 
ers. Mogegridge, at page 135, says:—‘‘I have but seldom detected any 
refuse in these nests ;” and this accords with what M. Erber tells us—* In 
October, 1872, however, I found a black layer of débris at the bottom of 
five nests of Nemesia eleanora, and this was composed principally of the 
remains of insects, and, among others, of some rather large beetles.” 
