‘i 
; 
222 AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWORK. 
weaver. Her snares are found in all sorts of positions and locations. In 
the angles of houses and walls, among leaves of trees, in shrubs and grasses, 
in old stumps, and caves and holes in the ground, wherever a 
oe footing can be had and a spinneret can be laid, this univer- 
icon! sal occupant of outhouses and grounds proceeds to weave her 
snare, Under all circumstances she shows rare ability to adapt 
it to the particular site where chance has fixed her abode, If bracing is 
required from above she sends upward a series of lines which support 
her sheeted snare. If bracing is required from below, as we haye seen 
(Fig. 208), she sends out a series of trestle lines, which keep the sheet in 
poise, and suggest the methods of carpenters when scaffolding a platform 
or floor, or trestling a bridge. If bracing be needed both above and be- 
low, as in the pouched snare (Fig. 209) woven between the bars of a farm 
fence, the lines are sent 
out in the yery positions 
to give the required sup- 
port. In fact, a civil en- 
gineer would decide, up- 
on examination, that his 
profession could have sug- 
gested no better arrange- 
ment under the cireum- 
stances. 
In the lawns and 
grounds around Philadelphia, and indeed almost every- 
where in the United States, Agalena’s snare will often be seen 
spread like a broad white sheet upon the upper surface of 
~ hedges and thick set plants, such as arbor vite, boxwood, 
i iy and honeysuckle. Into these she works a silk lined ecylindri- 
cal tunnel, which extends to the very heart of the plant, and 
often to the ground beneath. She manages, in some way, so to lash back 
the stems and twigs that, in spite of the natural elasticity and growth 
force of the plant, the tubular den or home is held quite in 
place. Not only so, but the sheeted web will be stayed and 
held in position by a series of lines that seem to display no 
little skill in adjustment. She thus places a tubular bridge between her 
foraging ground and her retreat. 
Once while visiting a brother, the late Commander Rhoderick Sheldon 
McCook, U. S. N., at his home in Vineland, N. J., my attention was called 
by him to one of these snares of Agalena built upon an evergreen bush 
planted in his yard. The comments of the sailor were striking and 
characteristic, and I regret that I cannot accyrately recall them now. But 
I well remember the amazement which he expressed as he pointed to this 
point and that in the structure of the snare, and compared it to the shrouds 
Fia. 210. Tubular work of Dysdera bicolor. 
— a 
Tubular 
Bridges. 
~ e 
i a i lal a ll Tl al Ui els 
