410 THE TARANTULA. 
ing about the house and yard—dragging my murdered 
Tarantula, which was as limber as a rag, out through the 
gate. She dragged the paralyzed victim to the dwelling- 
house, distant about fifty yards, and entombed it in her 
great cemetery under the floor, where she had already 
deposited many of its kindred. i 
I have been observing this spider as closely, consider- 
ing its nocturnal habits, as I could during the last twenty 
years. I have seen no nests, no webs, no eggs, nothing 
but a roughly-made hole seven or eight inches deep, car- 
ried down not quite perpendicularly, and widened a little 
at the bottom. I have examined many of these holes, 
and, except an occasional dead grasshopper, saw nothing 
in them that suggested the idea of a nest. These holes 
seem to be fortifications only, to protect them while they 
sleep from the incursions of their diurnal enemies. 
I have seen their young many times, always sticking 
among their stiff hairs, and clinging to their legs and 
body ; but where these young ones come from I am not 
prepared to explain, nor can I with my present experi- 
ence say, whether the Mygale Hentzii is viviparous Or 
oviparous. Its habit is to carry its young on its back 
until they are large enough to capture small insects for 
themselves, when it turns them off in some good hunt- 
ing-ground in such numbers that they would soon, if they 
could all come to maturity, monopolize the entire privi- 
leges of spiders on this little green globe. : 
Some of the ground spiders carry their eggs in a sack 
attached to the tip of their abdomen. One species makes 
nests with a trap-door to them. They are rare in this 
_ country. Ihave never seen any such contrivances about 
the hole of the Tarantula, nor have I ever seen it carryig 
an egg-sack. It may be possible that they keep such 4 
