340 
EPEIRID7E. 
in diameter, in which she deposits eighty or ninety spherical eggs of a brown colour, slightly 
cemented together in a subglobose mass. The cocoon is attached to walls and the inferior 
surface of stones by a thin covering of whitish web. The female has been observed to 
change her integument five times before she arrives at maturity, once in the cocoon, and four 
times after quitting it. 
In December, 1842, and March, 1843, several cocoons of Epeira calophylla were procured, 
comprising larvae of two distinct species of insects belonging to the family Ichneumonidce, 
which fed upon the ova contained in the cocoons and increased rapidly in size; on being con¬ 
verted into pupae, the females were observed to have the ovipositor turned over the posterior 
extremity of the abdomen. In the spring of 1843 both sexes of each species, in the imago or 
perfect state, issued from the cocoons, which had been placed in closed phials. These insects 
are very dissimilar in size and colour, and the eggs deposited by each in a single cocoon 
differ in number inversely as the dimensions of the females which produce them ; occasionally, 
the larvae of both species have been noticed in the same cocoon, but they have not hitherto 
been detected in the cocoons of any other spider, however favorable the circumstances might 
be as regards time, condition, and locality under which they were examined. 
Epeira calophylla usually employs a radius as a medium of communication between its 
net and a small tubular cell of white silk which constitutes its retreat, instead of spinning a 
separate line for that purpose; and this peculiar appropriation, whether the radius be in the 
plane of the net or whether it be withdrawn from that plane, as is frequently the case, imparts 
an unfinished appearance to the snare, as it prevents the spider from giving a spiral form 
to the elastic line on which the viscid globules are disposed, though this is sometimes 
attempted with a greater or less degree of success. No sooner does the spider arrive 
at one of the radii adjacent to that in connection with its cell than it returns, traversing the 
framework of the snare till it arrives at the adjacent radius on the opposite side, when it 
retraces its steps, and thus, oscillating between the two, spins a number of curved, viscid 
lines or arcs of circles diminishing in length from the circumference of the net towards the 
centre. Lister was well acquainted with this peculiarity, so common in the snare of Epeira 
calophylla , but has fallen into the error of supposing that it occurs invariably. See his 
‘Tractatus de Araneis,’ p. 48. 
Sometimes this species places its net in situations not entirely surrounded by objects to 
which it can immediately proceed to attach boundary-lines. In such cases its operations are 
deserving of attention. After connecting several radii with the most accessible points, it 
fixes a filament to that extremity of one of them which is furthest from the centre of its net: 
along this radius the spider proceeds, drawing out the filament from the spinners and guiding 
it with the claws of a posterior leg, till the point of union with one of the adjacent radii is 
attained; upon this radius it steps, and passing to its other extremity there makes fast the 
filament, by this simple process connecting with marginal lines distant objects between which 
no direct communication previously existed. 
Epeira calophylla presents a striking example of the insufficiency of the characters 
employed by M. Koch in distributing the Araneidea into genera and families ; though connected 
with the Epeiridce by the closest relations of affinity, yet he has placed it in his genus Eucliaria , 
which he includes in the family Theridiidre (‘ Uebers. des Arachn. Syst.’ erstes Heft, p. 7). 
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