252 
Peckham—The Sense of Sight in Spiders. 
was then put into the box close to the paper and at once ran 
across it and crept into her nest. 
July 1. The spider was pushed gently out of her nest and 
three inches beyond the paper. She ran back at once across 
the pink paper, and crept into her nest. 
July 2. Pushed her out twice, once in the morning and once 
in the afternoon, and let her go back over the pink paper. 
July 3. Thinking that by this time she might have learned 
to associate the color, pink, with the locality of her nest, we 
took the spider from the box, while bright blue paper was sub¬ 
stituted for the pink around her nest. We then made an imita¬ 
tion of her cocoon of white cotton batting, glued it into another 
corner of the box and surrounded it with pink paper to make it 
look as much as possible as the true cocoon had done before. 
The spider was then dropped into the box half an inch from 
the edge of the pink paper. She at once walked across the 
paper to the upper end of the cotton (where she had been in 
the habit of entering her nest), but as soon as her front legs 
touched the cotton she stopped, paused a moment, and then 
slowly retreated a little. Before long she advanced again, 
touched the cotton and retreated as before. This she repeated 
four times. She then started to walk across the cotton, but 
drew back again and took up her stand at the upper end where 
she remained motionless for half an hour, puzzling, perhaps, 
over the unaccountable thing that had happened to her nest. 
At the end of the half hour she touched it once more and then 
walked away to the other side of the box, passing within an 
inch of the blue paper without noticing her own nest. Within 
five minutes she returned to the artificial cocoon and stayed 
near it, walking about and looking at it for an hour. At the 
end of this time she was pushed gently toward the blue paper. 
When on the edge of it she caught sight of her true nest, and 
running to it crept in. 
July 4. When we went to the box in the morning we found 
the spider on the pink paper near the artificial cocoon. She 
had never before left the nest of her own accord. When the 
box was shaken slightly she left the false cocoon, but soon re¬ 
turned to it. 
