— i al a es Se ail ae ee eee 5, | - 
NESTING HABITS AND PROTECTIVE ARCHITECTURE. 297 
might think at the first glance that they had been thus distributed with 
esthetic intent. They are, however, simply the result of accident, caused 
by the restless movements of the spider around and around her room, and 
by the habit just alluded to. Out of the front door stretches the trapline, 
to which the fore claws of the spider are clasped; and towards the back 
part of the room, fastened to the spinnerets and probably clasped occa- 
sionally by the hind feet, there is another line which anchors the spider 
to her nest. Thus, both fore and aft, this truly domestic creature has 
strong attachments to her home. 
In order to test the ability of Insularis to adapt her nesting habits to 
change of plant environment, I selected several that had made nests in 
several leaves of oak and in clustered leaves of sumac. These 
Adapta- J transferred to some coniferous trees (spruce) standing upon a 
tions of iawn. The spiders proved themsel tent t th 
Nesting piders p mselves competent to meet the 
Habit. emergency. Their first movement 
was to station themselves beneath 
the branches of the pine, and in the course 
of time they chose themselves a site at the -s 
points where several twigs united. It was \ 
impossible, of course, to treat the situa- 
tion after the fashion to which they were 
bred among the clumps of huckleberry and 
sumac bushes, or in the grove of young 
oaks. The needle like leaves of the pine 
would permit of no such treatment, but it 
was not long before the upholstering art of 
the spider had overcome the difficulty, lashed ye, 273, Aaapted Nest of Insular Spider. 
the prickly leaves into some respectable sem- 
blance of smoothness, and covered them all over with silken tapestry. 
Finally, a hemispherical nest was placed within the joints, partly pro- 
tected on three sides by the twigs, and at. the exposed points spun of such 
close tissues that it formed ample protection. In this particular the pli- 
ability of the spider’s architectural instinct was fully demonstrated. 
I have repeated the experiment many times, and always found that 
these two nest making species when transferred from one plant to another, 
no matter how different the foliage may be, as in the above cases, are able 
completely to adapt themselves to the new circumstances and spin a habit- 
able home. (Fig. 273.) 
In the Domicile spider the habit of leaf tenting is not quite so firmly 
fixed as in the above species. She often builds a leaf nest which does 
not differ from those of her congeners already described, but I 
have frequently found her without any such domicile. In Wood- 
land Cemetery (Philadelphia) are great numbers of this species, 
who find a favorite web site in the interspaces of a barbed iron fence. Very 
Domicile 
Spider. 
