MATERNAL INDUSTRY: COCOONS OF ORBWEAVERS. 



79 



October 1st. When first observed, it was a round ball, which was gradually 

 wrought into a pear shaped object. This, when I saw it, was hung from 

 the under side of a 



Cocoon sheeted 

 Hung to a 

 Curtain. 



curtain (Fig. 

 41), that curved over 

 and extended like a 

 bridge from the shield shaped 

 hub of the snare to the adjacent 

 wall. The curtain terminated in 

 a pocket, from the bottom of 

 which the cocoon was suspended. 

 The cocoon was thus just behind 

 the orb which was spun across 

 the angle about seven feet from 

 the floor. The characteristic zig- 

 zag ribbon of the web extended 

 well downward, and a number of 

 lines stretched from side to side 

 across the angle, nearly to the 

 floor, forming a convenient gang- 

 way for the spider. 



Immediately after finishing 

 her work the mother spider be- 

 gan to languish. She would not 

 take flies as aforetime when of- 

 fered to her. Once she tried to 

 escape from the room into the 

 Park, but was brought back, and 

 placed upon her lower gangway 

 lines, which she mounted, with great apparent difficulty, to the central 

 shield, behind which she stationed herself. She was found dead upon the 

 floor one morning, having lived only a few days after the 

 completion of her cocoon. 



The cocoons of Cophinaria vary in length from five- 

 eighths of an inch to one inch and five-eighths. Three meas- 

 urements between these limits are one and a half, one and 

 a fourth, and one and one-eighth inches. The bowl is gen- 

 erally about one inch wide, and the flask one-eighth inch 

 wide at the tip of the neck. The bowls are for the most 

 coon of Argiope part decidedly pyriform in shape, but sometimes are spher- 

 ical instead of oval. As the spiderlings grow a little within 

 the sac after liatching, the bowl somewhat expands, or rather fulls out, but 

 the original shap.e remains substantially unchanged. 



The structure of the cocoon is as follows : First, the outer case or shell 



Cocoon of Argiope suspended from a curtain 

 behind her snare in Sedgley House. 



Pig. 42. A round CO- 



