210 THE HAUNTS OF LIFE 
the eggs or the young ones is to put them all 
in a hole in the ground. Earthworms make 
a little barrel of hardened slime secreted by 
the “saddle” or swollen girdle on their body, 
and as this slips forward it carries the liber- 
ated eggs with it and closes up at the ends. 
We find it sometimes when digging in the 
garden. The mother trap-door spider makes 
a well-finished shaft with smooth walls and 
a silk-hinged lid, and lays her eggs in a bunch 
at the foot. The crocodile lays her eggs in the 
warm earth, sometimes with decaying vege- 
table matter round about, and the young one 
calls to her from within the egg when it is 
ready to be hatched, for it would be awk- 
ward to be born 2 feet below the surface. 
Yet that is what happens to the offspring of 
those mound-birds that dig a hole in the 
warm, loose volcanic sand of the beach in 
Celebes. The mole’s nest is also underground 
—a grass-lined chamber below a big mole-hill. 
Another way of securing the safety of the 
eggs or the offspring is to hide them off the 
ground altogether. Many insects lay their 
eggs in or on leaves; many spiders put their 
eggs in a silken bag or cocoon and fasten this 
between two leaves, or in a crevice. Some 
