them, I have never been able to secure more than a single male spider.[1] During the winter, spring, and late autumn (October) the female appears to live solitary, in the daytime at least, and the male probably hides in the crevices of old walls and in similar places. I have diligently turned over piles of stone, greatly to the annoyance of many little scorpions, but have never secured, or even seen, another male spider. This is the more to be regretted as the species of trap-door spider are much better characterized in the male than in the female sex, the bulb-like enlargement which is found at the end of the palpi in the former taking on a great variety of forms, each of which is distinctive.
M. de Walckenaer[2] says:—"C'est toujours pendant la nuit que ces aranéides travaillent à leurs habitations et courent après leur proie. C'est en Août que la Mygale maçonne (Nemesia—or Mygale—cæmentaria) atteint toute sa grosseur. . . . En Septembre elle devient mère et méchante en même temps . . . les mouches, les moucherons, les petits vers lui servent de pâture; elle les prend dans les filets qu'elle étend et attache sur les inégalités des terres voisines de sa demeure. Elle vit après la ponte en société avec son mâle. Dorthès a vu plusieurs fois, dans la même habitation, le mâle et la femelle avec une trentaine de petits."
Any one, therefore, who has an opportunity of examining the nests during the early autumn, might
- ↑ Three days before sending this MS. to print, and long after the plates had been completed, I captured on Oct. 23rd one male of Nemesia Eleanora. He lay crouched in a crevice in a mossy bank, and had, perhaps, been driven out of some deeper hiding-place by the heavy rains.
- ↑ Les Aranéides de France, p. 4.
