branched-wafer nest from Australia, alluded to above (p. 217), and the fragmentary specimens of giant cork-nests from the same country exhibited at the British Museum, give us a hint of what the Antipodes will some day reveal to us; while a stray allusion to a trap-door nest found near Lake Dilolo, in Southern Africa, by Livingstone,[1] affords an indication of their existence in another quarter of the globe. Hitherto but little importance has been attached by naturalists to the study of the nests of trap-door spiders, but a knowledge of their structure is often of the greatest assistance, and will, I venture to predict, be found to afford a clue leading to the discovery of many new species; for it not unfrequently happens that, while two spiders appear so much alike as to pass for representatives of the same species, their nests are totally dissimilar and proclaim them, as in fact they are, quite distinct from one another. For an example of this we have only to turn to the seven species of Nemesia, treated of in the foregoing pages, of which six construct dissimilar nests, and only two, building nests of the cork type, make them alike, though the general resemblance between the spiders themselves is extraordinarily close. Thus far, indeed, it will be seen that no two distinct species of European trap-*
- ↑ "A large reddish spider (Mygale), named by the natives 'sclàli,' runs about with great velocity. Its nest is most ingeniously covered with a hinged cover or door, about the size of a shilling, the inner face of which is of a pure white silky substance like paper, while the outer one is coated with earth precisely like that in which the hole is made, so that when it is closed it is quite impossible to detect the situation of the nest. Unfortunately the cavity for breeding is never seen except when the owner is out, and has left the door open behind her."—Dr. Livingstone, from "Popular Accounts of Travels in South Africa," chap. xvii. p. 221.
