112 HOMES WITHOUT HANDS. 



Scorpion certainly does not like, but which it can endure without 

 suffering much inconvenience. Generally, the Scorpion was 

 dead in a few minutes after the wound was inflicted. 



Many of the true spiders are among the burrowers, and, even 

 in our own country, it is possible to see a sandy bank studded 

 with their silk-lined tunnels. 



There is such a bank that skirts a fir-wood near my house, 

 the material being the loosest possible sandstone, scarcely hard 

 enough in any place to resist a pinch between the iingers and 

 thumb. About an inch or two above the soil, this sandstone is 

 quite excavated by the spiders, and as the sandy sides of their 

 tunnels would fall in were they not supported in some manner, 

 every tunnel is carefully lined by a coating of tough webbing, 

 very strong, very elastic, very porous, and yet not suffering 

 one particle of sand to pass through its interstices. From the 

 opening of each burrow a web is spread, looking very much like 

 a casting net, with a hole through its middle. From this again, 

 radiate a number of separate threads, which extend to a con- 

 siderable distance from the entrance. 



At the very bottom of its silken tunnel the living architect 

 lies concealed, its sensitive feet resting on the web, so that it is 

 enabled to perceive the approach of the smallest insect that 

 crosses the spot which it has so elaborately fortified. It is 

 curious to watch the various insects that are caught by different 

 species of spiders. The common garden spider (Epeira dia- 

 dema) enjoys the greatest variety of diet, and the water spider, 

 of which we shall see something in a future page, is also capable 

 of varying its food to a considerable extent. The Burrowing 

 Spiders, however, of which there are several species, are much 

 restricted in their diet, the chief food that is found in their webs 

 consisting of small beetles and midges. These spiders belong to 

 the family Agelenidse. 



One of the best, if not indeed the very best, examples of the 

 British burrowing Arachnida is the remarkable species, Atyjpus 

 Sulzeri, a creature which is so rare as to have received no 

 English name. It is a small species, not half an inch in length, 

 but it is a curiously-constructed being; and were it made on 

 a larger scale, would be a really formidable species. Its jaws 



