and it has often been asked what this could possibly mean.
Some have thought that the drawing was fanciful, others that it was made from an abnormal or injured nest. However, I believe that the drawing, though rude, is, in fact, not very incorrect, and shows a case of repair or enlargement of the nest, a subject to be treated of more fully further on. There is a specimen exhibited in the British Museum which in this respect very nearly corresponds with Browne's figure; it is labelled "Nest of Trap-door Spider with two doors, from the spider having enlarged its abode.—Jamaica." Here one sees that the spider has prolonged its tube about half an inch beyond the original mouth of the nest, where it has constructed a new mouth and door, the old door standing straight up at the back of and behind the new one.
I imagine that the explanation of this curious piece of cobbling may be somewhat as follows:—When the nest was in its original state and had but one door, this door became by some accident covered over with earth to about the depth of half an inch, and the inmate was thus imprisoned. Then the spider, being, like most other members of its order, very unwilling to abandon its home, determined to clear away the entrance to its nest, and to lengthen the tube so that it should reach up to the new level of the surface of the earth. . . . If I am right, this should rather be called a lengthening than an enlargement of the tube.
The nests of the cork type (A, p. 79) may usually be distinguished at a glance from those of the wafer type by the greater thickness of the door, and by its manner of shutting, but a nest from Morocco has been figured
