SPIDERS. 117 



but comes true and fair upon the opening which it defends. The 

 inner surface of the trap-door is white and felt-like, and exactly 

 lesembles the interior of the tube, but its outer surface is 

 covered with earth, taken from the soil in which the hole is dug. 

 As the trap-door is flush with the surface of the ground, it is 

 evident that, when it is closed, all traces of the burrow and its 

 inhabitant are. lost. 



The spider is urged by a curious instinct to make its tunnel 

 in some sloping spot, and to keep the hinge uppermost, so that 

 when the inhabitant leaves its home, or retreats to the extremity 

 of its burrow, the door closes of its own accord, and effectually 

 conceals it. New-comers into the country which the Trap-door 

 Spider inhabits are often surprised by seeing the ground open, a 

 little lid lifted up, and a rather formidable spider peer about, as 

 if to reconnoitre the position before leaving its fortress. At the 

 least movement on the part of the spectator, back pops the 

 spider, like the cuckoo on a clock, clapping its little door after 

 it quite as smartly as the wooden bird, and in most cases suc- 

 ceeds in evading the search of the astonished observer, the soil 

 being apparently unbroken, without a trace of the curious little 

 door that had been so quickly shut. 



In the British Museum there is one of these tubes, which tells 

 a curious story, and shows that the spider which made it had 

 chosen cultivated ground for its residence. About three inches 

 from the mouth of the tube, there is a tough, leathery flap, the 

 object of which is not very apparent. A closer examination 

 shows that this flap was once a trap-door, and that the spider 

 had lengthened its cell and made a second door at the new 

 entrance. This fact proved that the ground had increased in 

 thickness since the spider completed its habitation, and that 

 the addition to the surface was very rapid, for the spider is not 

 remarkable for longevity, and yet, in its short Mfe, three inches of 

 soil had covered the entrance of its silken cell. Evidently the 

 creature had burrowed in cultivated soil, most probably in a 

 garden, and in process of tUling the ground, a spadeful or two of 

 earth had been thrown over the trap-door. Being thus im- 

 prisoned, the spider had no other resource but to push its way 

 through the earth, lengthen its tube, and make another door 

 level with the new surface. 



The spider itself is an odd-looking creature, with ratlier shoit, 



