GROUND SPIDERS. ]07 



tion to it whatever. Finally the mother notices it, feels 

 and examines it with one of her fore -legs, and then 

 takes it in her mandibles and shoots it across the jar, 

 where she is in the habit of throwing refuse material. 

 Neither will the young pay any attention to a fly that 

 I kill and lay in their path ; but if the mother holds it 

 in her mandibles and crushes it, they crowd around it, 

 and seem to be sipping the juices. In the absence 

 of other food the mother crushes some of her own 

 babies, and holds them so that the little cannibals can 

 suck the juices. 



The young do not leave the mother all at the same 

 time, but go out in detachments. "When three weeks 

 old about a dozen manifest a disposition to leave the 

 maternal home. They run up on the highest point 

 of a plant, and remain there until I set the jar where 

 the plants can lean against the trunk of a tree, when 

 they speedily ran up to the branches ; the rest are 

 quiet, staying with the mother a week longer. But now 

 she manifests a disposition to send them adrift. She 

 is no longer quiet and patient, but frequently picks one 

 up and throws it across the jar, yet seems to be careful, 

 not to injure it. She behaves much in the same way 

 that the higher animals do in weaning their young. 



It is now a bright, sunny day in early November, 

 and a large proportion of these little creatures — fully 

 fifty — seem to be in great haste to leave. Like the 

 first, they also run up the body of a tree, and I see no 

 more of them ; but in the spring I shall probably find 



