THE YOUNG NATURALIST. 



41 



in a clean empty jar or basin (a preserved-meat pot is one of the best recep- 

 tacles I know of), sufficient spirit is poured in to immerse the spider, and 

 the cover is put on. In a fortnight or so the action of the spirit will, if it 

 be pretty strong, have stiffened the specimen, which must then be placed 

 carefully in a tube sufficiently large to receive it without too much compres- 

 sion of the legs ; a small strip of white card should be slipped in behind it, 

 the tube filled up with spirit, and corked (or, better still, stopped with a 

 pledget of cotton-wool), and inverted in a larger bottle, as recommended 

 above. The spider's name may also be written on paper or parchment, and 

 inserted in the tube, Prepared in this way, and ranged on narrow shelves, 

 the spiders may be seen without removing the tubes from the bottles, and 

 they present a very neat and sightly appearance even to the most indifferent 

 observer. 



The places in which spiders are found are very various, and no situation 

 wet or dry, high or low, should be left unsearched. In the winter and spring 

 months, moss and debris of all kinds, such as heaps of grass, cut rushes, fern, 

 dead leaves, brushwood, and decaying faggots, should be carefully searched, 

 the collector shaking out those various materials over a newspaper, when 

 many a rare species of Neriene or Walchenaera, as well as some kinds of 

 Drassidte and others, seldom met with elsewhere, will be found. As spring 

 advances and summer comes on, spiders, as a rule, leave their winter haunts, 

 and get up upon the bushes and trees, and amongst rushes, grass, and other 

 herbage of all kinds, when the sweep-net and umbrella, as above recom- 

 mended, will come into requisition. At all times in the year spiders conceal 

 themselves under stones, logs of wood, old bark, ivy-stems, and other such 

 shelter ; while many species, especially the adult males, may be found run- 

 ning upon the surface of the ground, disporting themselves on walls, tree- 

 trunks, posts and rails, or running on the uppermost bar of iron fencing. 

 Old buildings, cellars, and unused rooms are also the habitats of some pecu- 

 liar species. In fact, wherever insect life can penetrate, spiders of one kind 

 or another are sure to be found ; and, as in all other Natural History pur- 

 suits, the keenest eye, the most dextrous fingers, and the most unwearied toil 

 and patience, will bring the greatest number of rarities to the Araneologist." 



CONCHOLOGICAL JOTTINGS. 



By ALBERT H. WATERS, B.A., M.C.S., &c. 

 (Continued from Page 26.) 

 So far I have been writing about marine mollusca. I now proceed to 

 jot down a few notes on land and freshwater shells. Without attempting to 



