however, though the spider appeared in perfect health.
Neither this spider nor the true N. cæmentaria of Montpellier appears to have any idea of digging a hole when placed on soft earth if they are adult; and the same thing is true of N. Manderstjernæ and N. Eleanora, but the young of all these spiders readily excavate nests for themselves.
I have once seen a nearly full grown, and probably adult, Cteniza Moggridgii make a perfect tube and furnish it with a moveable door in a single night when confined under gauze on moist earth, but this is the only instance (except that of Cteniza Californica, recorded above) in which I have known an adult trap-door spider excavate or attempt to do so.
These Ctenizas seem to be peculiarly able to adapt themselves to circumstances, for two young ones, which I sent by post to M. Lucas at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris in little wide-mouthed, cylindrical, blue glass bottles, not only lined the bottles with silk but also closed them at the mouth with a door fitting accurately into a bevelled lip, in the manufacture of both of which fragments of moss, the only material at their disposal, were used in place of earth.[1] It is curious to see how quickly the young trap-door spiders, both of the cork and wafer kinds, when taken from the nest of the mother, will make their own perfect little dwellings in captivity, and I have known them construct tube and door within fifteen hours.
- ↑ M. H. Lucas, in Bull. des Séances de la Soc. Entom. de Fr. No. 27 (1874), p. 101.
