78 



AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWORK. 



and so stretched and fastened to adjacent objects, that the mother leaves 



her precious casket so well poised and finely hung that even the strongest 



wind fails to disturb its balance when a good position has been selected. 



In this position it will commonly remain until the brood is hatched ; but, 



as we have already seen, sometimes the mother's care is misplaced. 



Stat)ihty j^ sometimes happens that the cocoon is simply anchored to 



leaves, and, when the autumn brings the usual fall of foliage, it 



is carried down to the ground. Tlicrc, buried among rubbish, covered with 



snows and rjiins, the chances for development of the young are seemingly 



not very good. Yet even thus it is possible that, in sites comparatively 



undisturbed by tramping feet of men and animals, the eggs may remain 



healthful throughout winter, and yield their 



broodling Argiopes when spring suns dissolve 



the snow and the spring wind has scattered 



tlie leaves. 



It is not an unusual thing for Cophinaria 

 to hang her cocoon in the angle of walls in 

 a house or outbuilding. (Fig. 40.) 

 I have met a number of such cases 

 in the outlying parts of Philadel- 

 phia, as, for example, Germantown and West 

 Philadelphia. There still remain in those 

 sections a number of gardens and spacious 

 yards, within which this large and beautiful 

 creature has maintained her position against 

 all encroachments of civilization since the 

 landing of the Swedish pioneers. Their snares 

 are woven upon the vines which cluster about 

 arbors, outbuildings, and verandahs ; and it is 

 a common thing for the mother, when the 

 cocooning time has come, to slip underneath 

 a roof or cornice, and there suspend her egg sac. 



In this case she protects it by a slender encasement of retitelarian lines 

 spun entirely around it. A cocoon thus disposed is represented at Fig. 40, 

 as it was found in the early summer in the basement of a hotel at Atlantic 

 City. The enclosing lines were from seven to eight inches high, and of 

 about equal width. The lines were much soiled by dust, the accumulation 

 of winter and spring, but the cocoon proved to contain many healthy 



Indoor 



Sites. 



Fig. 40. Cophinaria's cocoon suspended 

 in the angle of a wall in the midst of 

 crossed lines. 



spiders, although in the lower part it was infested with parasitic ichneu- 



Another case of suspension within doors offered an interesting exception 

 to the usual mode. This cocoon was hung in the angle of the walls of a 

 room in Sedglcy House, at Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, the headquarters 

 of Captain Chasteau, of the Park Guard, who said that it was made about 



