400 



HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



a new entrance, with a new door formed at a small distance ; 

 or, if he take the door entirely away, another will be con- 

 structed in less than twelve hours. 



The habitation thus singularly formed and defended is not 

 at all used as a snare, but merely as a safe abode for the spi- 

 der, which hunts its prey at night only ; and, when caught, 

 devours it in security at the bottom of its den, which is ge- 

 nerally strewed with the remains of coleopterous insects.^ 

 From some curious observations of M. Dorthes on this species 

 in the second volume of the LinncBan Transactions, it appears 

 that both the male and female spider, and as many as thirty 

 young ones, occasionally inhabit one of these galleries. 

 My gale Sauvagesii of Rossi {M.fodiens Walck.), which is 

 a distinct species found in Corsica, forms a similar habit- 

 ation, of which M. Audouin has given us an interesting de- 

 scription. ^ 



The galleries just described are the work of European spi- 

 ders; but similar ones are fabricated by Actinopus nidulans, 

 an inhabitant of the West India islands, as well as by many 

 other tropical species. I have seen one of these, which had 

 been dug out of the earth, in the cabinet of Thomas Hall, 

 Esq., r. L. S., that was nearly a foot in length, and above an 

 inch in diameter, forming a cylindrical bag of dark-coloured 

 silk, closed at the bottom, and accurately fitted at the top by 

 a door or lid.^ 



The habitation of Argyroneta aquatica, the other spider to 

 which I alluded, is chiefly remarkable for the element in 

 which it is constructed and the materials that compose it. It 

 is built in the midst of water, and formed, in fact, of air ! 

 Spiders are usually terrestrial, but this is aquatic, or rather 

 amphibious ; for though she resides in the midst of water, in 

 which she swims with great celerity, sometimes on her belly, 

 but more frequently on her back, and is an admirable diver, 

 she not unfrequently hunts on shore, and having caught her 



1 Sauvages Hist, de VAcad. des Sc. de Paris, 1758, p. 26. 



2 Audouin in Ann. Soc. Ent. de France, ii. 69. 



3 See several Memoirs upon this and some allied species by Messrs. Sells, 

 Saunders, and Westwood, in the Trans, of the Ent. Soc. of London, vols. ii. 

 and iii. 



