30 
Psyche 
[April 
The communal webs of the Cyrtophora are built over bushes or 
trees and often cover a considerable area. On Teneriffe I found 
a colony enveloping a long Pelargonium hedge in the garden of 
the Hotel Martianez at Puerto Orotava, and in front of the same 
hotel a huge web rising from the summit of a Lonicera hedge to 
the telegraph wires several feet above it. At Villa Orotava, in 
what was formerly the garden of the distinguished botanist 
Wilpret, there was a fine web about twelve feet high and four 
feet broad spread over the foliage of a cedar tree. On the island 
of Palma smaller webs were seen on the way-side Opuntia cacti 
near San Andres and Sauce. On Gran Canaria they were common 
in the banana plantations and on cacti at Telde, and on a beau- 
tiful myrtle hedge in the finca of Don Salvador Manriquez de 
Lara at Tafira. But the most extensive web was seen on this 
island near Puerto de la Luz. It completely enveloped a dense 
hedge of Opuntia fully one hundred feet long and six to eight 
feet wide. I estimated its area at somewhat more than 1000 
square feet. 
In all these cases the web was the joint work of dozens or, 
in the last instance mentioned, of thousands of Cyrotphoras. 
It consists of two parts, a very irregular structure or frame- 
work of long, coarse, yellow and somewhat glutinous threads, 
running in all directions and attached to the plants, and a 
variable number of suborbicular, horizontal webs, suspended 
side by side or one above the other in the frame work. These 
webs are three to eight inches in diameter and made of very even 
square meshes, of the size of those of mosquito netting, but 
consisting of exceedingly delicate, whitish silk. The Cyrphoras 
rest on the lower, convex surfaces of these webs. Individuals of 
all ages live together amicably and seem to feed in common on 
the prey that is caught in the webs, but the adult females, (15 
mm. long) which are gray, with large, paired, silver spots on the 
dorsal surface of the abdomen, are usually few in number. The 
egg-cocoons are elliptical, about 15 to 20 mm. long, made of 
dense, coarse, gray-green silk, and are suspended vertically in or 
near the center of the whole structure. They vary from one to 
five in number and are attached to one another in a series, so 
that they resemble a string of minute sausages. The mother 
