PART II.
TRAP-DOOR SPIDERS.
It is now one hundred and sixteen years since
Patrick Browne gave an illustration in his Civil and Natural History of Jamaica[1] of the nest of a trap-door
spider, the first record of the kind with which I am
acquainted. Seven years later the careful observations
of the Abbé Sauvages appeared,[2] in which he
gave a very good description of the nests of the
"araignée maçonne" (Nemesia cæmentaria), which he
discovered near Montpellier, likening them to little
rabbit burrows lined with silk and closed by a tightly-fitting
moveable door. In 1778 and 1794 Rossi[3]
published an interesting account of the nest and
habits of a trap-door spider which he had observed in
Corsica and near Pisa; and from that time up to the
present day the curious dwellings of these creatures,
many species of which have been discovered in warm
climates, have continued to attract the attention of
naturalists.
Very little, however, has been added to our knowledge of the life-history of these remarkable archi-*
