406 
CLASS ARACHN1DA. 
more downy and soft, where the sacs of eggs, and the young 
ones newly disclosed, are to be shut up. Although the exter- 
nal cap or pavilion is designedly, without doubt, more or less 
soiled by foreign bodies, which serve to conceal its presence, 
the apartment of the industrious fabricator is always scrupu- 
lously clean. The pouches which enclose the eggs are four, 
live, or even six, for each habitation, which, nevertheless, 
forms but a single habitation. These pouches are of a lenti- 
cular form, and are more than four lines in diameter : they are 
formed of a sort of taffeta as white as snow, and furnished 
internally with a down of the finest kind. It is only at the 
end of December, or in the month of January, that the laying 
of the eggs takes place ; it was therefore necessary, beforehand, 
to provide for the defence of their progeny against both the 
rigour of the season and hostile incursions. Every thing of 
this kind has been carefully done. The receptacle of this 
precious deposit is separated from the web, immediately ap- 
plied upon the stone, by a soft down, and from the external cap, 
by the various stories of which I have spoken. Among the 
emarginations which border the tent, some are altogether 
closed by the continuity of the stuff; others have their edges 
simply lapped over, so that the uroctea, by raising them, may 
issue at will from the tent, and re-enter. When it quits its 
domicile to proceed to the chase, it has little cause to fear 
that its habitation should be invaded, for itself alone possesses 
the secret of the impenetrable emarginations, and the key to 
those by which it can introduce itself. When the young ones 
are in a state to do without maternal cares, they take their 
departure and proceed to establish elsewhere their particular 
habitations, while the mother dies in her own tent. Thus the 
last is at once the cradle and the tomb of the uroctea.” 
DKASSUS, Walck., 
Differ from Clotlio in many characters. Their forceps are 
