Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/183

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At p. 19, in the Fauna del Regno di Napoli, M. Costa gives the following account of the nest of Nemesia cellicola, which he discovered above San Martino in September, 1833:— "Vive entro la polvere arida, nelle cavità oscure delle muraglie, e propriamente nelle così dette Saettiere, ove, col glutine suo, si costruisce un tubo delicato e mobile, che ha cura di affidare nel suo origine a qualche corpo stabile nel fondo del muro, e che in terra nella polvere, aprendosi l'altro estremo sul piano inclinato dalla polvere stessa costituto." This, with the exception of the words "e che in terra nella polvere," which are unintelligible to me as they stand, and appear to want a verb, may be translated as follows:— "She lives in the dry dust, in the obscure crevices of walls, and especially in those which are called Saettiere (loop-holed walls?), where she constructs a delicate and flexible tube with her viscid secretion, and which she takes care to fasten at its commencement to some solid body at the bottom of the wall, . . . the other extremity opening on the inclined plane formed by the dust itself." We may remark that there is here no mention of any door or concealment at the mouth of the tube, and in this and some other respects the nest of Nemesia cellicola would appear to resemble the nest of Atypus piceus from the neighbourhood of Paris. See above in the text, p. 78. B. On the Habits of Cteniza Ariana.

The following is a free translation of an account read by M. Erber before the Botanico Zoological Association of Vienna,[1] of the very curious observations which he made on Cteniza Ariana when travelling in the Grecian Archipelago.

"On my return voyage [from Rhodes], I stayed for a fortnight in the island of Tinos, and, among other things, I cap-

  1. Verhand. der k. k. zoologisch-botanischer Verein in Wien, vol. xviii. (1868), p. 905.