trap-door spider (N. congener, Camb.[1]). The characteristic portions of this nest are shown in Plate XVIII., and fig. A 3, in the same Plate, represents its occupant.
The hedge-banks near Hyères, and also about the railway station of the same name, which is some 4 miles from the town itself, are frequently tenanted by this spider. During a short stay there in May, 1873, I secured a large number of specimens, and verified the structure of the nest by a careful examination of thirty-eight examples. The nest is invariably branched and furnished with a lower door, but the branch is of variable length, usually short, and never, as far as I could detect, quite reaches the surface. In some cases this branch was so short that it could scarcely contain the spider, and, under these circumstances, it is not easy to conceive any other use for it than that of retaining the lower door when not in use. It may, however, enable the spider to take up a rather better position when engaged, as she frequently is if disturbed, in keeping the main tube closed by pressing the lower door upwards with her feet, for then her head points downwards, and her abdomen rests in the branch.
I have seen her in this attitude on several occasions when I had cut out a block of earth similar to that figured in the plate. The lower door is quite unlike that of either of the other two double-door wafer nests, being wedge-shaped, tapering from below up-*
- ↑ Mr. Pickard-Cambridge's description will be found at p. 292, below. In its characters this female spider (the male is unknown) most nearly resembles N. cæmentaria, but differs, among other points, in markings and in having one or more spines on the genual joint of leg, these spines being almost always absent in the same joint in cæmentaria. The nests of the two species are totally unlike.
