perhaps, discover the happy families spoken of by M. Dorthès, but which it has never been my good fortune to see. It is not known positively whether the male spider ever assists in the construction of the nest, but, as we know that the female is able to make it without his aid, there seems no reason to suppose that he does.
I have seen the female Nemesia meridionalis construct a trap-door in captivity, after having been placed on a flower-pot full of earth in which I had made a cylindrical hole.[1] She quickly disappeared into this hole, and, during the night following the day of her capture, she made a thin web over the aperture, into which she wove any materials which came to hand. The trap-door at this stage resembled a rudely constructed, horizontal, geometrical web, attached by two or three threads to the earth at the mouth of the hole, while in this web were caught the bits of earth, roots, moss, leaves &c. which the spider had thrown into it from above. After the second night the door appeared nearly of the normal texture and thickness, but in no case would it open completely, and it seemed that the spider was too much disgusted with her quarters to think it worth while to make a perfect door. I believe that when a door is finished the few threads which served as supports and connected it with the earth on either side of the hinge are severed, and this is borne out by the following instance. While I was at work one evening drawing the spider's nest concealed in the plant of ceterach fern (Plate XI., fig. A, p. 105) which I had dug out for the purpose, I detected something
- ↑ An account of further experiments with captive spiders will be found in Appendix G.
