480 SUPPLEMENT 



the branch, but remained constantly on her cocoon, placing 

 it under her breast. The Tliomisus ciiratus, of which we 

 have spoken above, bends a willow leaf in two, and fills its 

 interior capacity with a web of white silk, in the midst of 

 which it encloses its cocoon, which is oval, and about the 

 size of a cherry stone. The leaf is then closed on all sides 

 by a web similar to that of the interior, strong, and tolerably 

 thick. The female places herself at its exteraal surface, 

 watches assiduously over her depot, and never lets it go, even 

 when an attempt is made to drive her from it. Other species 

 place their cocoons in the clefts of old stakes, &c. The eggs 

 of the thoinisi are round, more or less yellow, and forty or fifty 

 in number in some cocoons, a hundred in others ; they are 

 not coherent. The young are born in June or July. To 

 pass the winter, they, as well as their mothers, conceal them- 

 selves under heaps of dry leaves, under different bodies, and 

 sometimes even in the nests of small birds. They re-appear 

 in the earliest fine days of spring. When the thomisi are 

 seized, they contract their feet towards the body, and roll 

 themselves into a ball, as do some other species of araneides. 

 The Lycos^ remain almost continually on the ground, 

 where they run very fast; the holes which they find there, or 

 those which they make, and enlarge as they grow older, pre- 

 venting them from tumbling in, by strengthening the interior 

 walls with a web of silk, serve them as an abode. The Lycosa 

 l^erita raises, above the hole which she inhabits, a small 

 cylindrical tube, formed of earth. Some others establish 

 themselves in cavities and clefts of walls. The species Allo- 

 droma even constructs a tube there, composed of a fine web, 

 covered at the exterior with parcels of earth or sand, a few 

 lines in length ; it closes it at the time of laying. Placed 

 near the entrance of their dwellings, they there watch their 

 pre\-. It is there also, or at least in similar retreats, that 

 they hybernate. The laraniuJa, according to Olivier, takes 



