1924] Some Life History Notes on the Black Widow Spider 163 
nest in which she spent all of her time except when prowling. 
Here too she made the cocoons, and here they reposed until 
such a time as the mother chose to kick them out. Fig. 2. 
shows the nest, natural size, with two coccons, and the mother 
clinging to the lower one; just above is the larva of a mud- wasp 
which I dropped there for food. The spider was fed wasp larvae 
of various species, white grub worms and grasshopper nymphs 
in this way, by dropping them on the web. The spider would 
always carry these morsels to the bottom of her cup-like den and 
spin a web around the food. The manoeuvers were always carried 
on at night, however. The young were less timid, and would feed 
upon the wasp larva at various times during the day. This was 
done by merely standing upon it and sucking out its juices. 
There was no evidence of the very young spiders covering the 
prey with web. The mother spider occasionally fetches the prey 
from some little distance and carries it into the nest. I once 
placed the quiescent prepupa of the mud-dauber on the floor of 
the cage three inches away; during the night she removed 
this to her nest. This shows not only that she can move 
loads as large as herself over and through her webby entangle- 
ments, but also that her prey need not be active to attract her 
attention. 
The spider kept the nest very tidy, and carried out all the 
dried remains of her food that had accumulated. She did not do 
this every day, but occasionally when the accumulation of 
rubbish became conspicuous she turned in for the general house- 
cleaning. I once arrived in time to see the latter part of one of 
these affairs at 6 a. m. This activity is also usually a night affair, 
but this time she did not finish until after day-break. Just as I 
arrived, she took up her last fragment, a dried grasshopper 
nymph, from the bottom of her lair, carried it by a circuitous 
route up to the rim of the hollow and cast it overboard where it 
dropped to the floor. She carried it in a queer fashion; with one 
hind leg she held it close to the tip of her abdomen while she 
slowly picked her way among the criss-cross threads of her web, 
until she reached a point from where it could be dropped below. 
All of the debris had been carried out during the night, and most 
