Arachnida embolobrachiata (scorpions, spiders, mites, etc.)

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The Cambridge Manuals of Science and

Literature

SPIDERS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

HonUon: FETTER LANE, E.G.

C. F. CLAY, MANAGER

(Ettnburglj: 100, PRINCES STREET

ILcmHon: WILLIAM WESLEY & SON, 28, ESSEX STREET, STRAND

Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO.
lUtpjtg: F. A. BROCKHAUS
$eto gork: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
anfc Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD.

All rights reserved

The Banana Spider, natural size, from a photograph by

Mr James Adams.

'I O O O

SPIDERS

BY

CECIL WARBURTON, M.A.

Christ's College

Zoologist to the Royal Agricultural
Society

Cambridge :

at the University Press

1912

4 i

4 i

I

Cambridge :

PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

to

With the exception of the coat of arms at
the foot, the design on the title page is a
reproduction of one used by the earliest known
Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521

PREFACE

riHHE modest dimensions of this book are perhaps
sufficient indication that it is not intended as
an aid to the collector. There are about five hundred
and fifty known species of spiders in the United
Kingdom alone, and at least an equal number of
pages would be needed to describe them.

Our concern is with the habits and modes of life
of spiders — especially of such as are most frequently
met with and most easily recognised, and the reader,
especially if he is fortunate enough to spend an
occasional holiday in southern Europe, will find little
in the following pages which he cannot verify — or
disprove — by his own observations. Indeed the hope
that some of his readers may be induced to investigate
on their own account has actuated the writer through-
out, and has led him to lay considerable stress upon
the methods of research and the ingeniously devised
experiments by means of which whatever knowledge
we possess has been obtained.

CECIL WARBURTON

CAMBRIDGE

March, 1912

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. A Survey of the Field. Evidences of spider in-
dustry. Where to look for spiders. Variety
of habits 1

II. What is a Spider ? The Arthropoda and their
divisions. Arachnida, Characteristics of a
spider. Spinnerets and their use . . 5

III. The Circular Snare. Foundation lines. The

spiral with its viscid beads. The building of
the snare. Why the spider is not caught in
its own snare 13

I V. The Mental Powers of Spiders. The human stand-

point. Instinct. Sight. Hearing. Smell.
Taste. Memory and " educability " . . 20

V. Trap-snares and Balloons. Variations of the

circular snare. The snare of Hyptiotes.
Webs of Theridion and Linyphia. The iron
railing and its aeronauts. A race congress.
Gossamer. Geographical distribution . . 30

VI. Agelena. Its web. The spider and its behaviour

in captivity. The platform and its carpet.
The construction of the cocoon. Instinctive,
not intelligent 3$

VII. Water-Spiders. Marine spiders. The fresh-

water spider. The diving bell, and how it
is filled with air. Behaviour of the male.
Winter and summer houses . 47

CONTENTS ix

CHAP. PAGE

VIII. Crab-Spiders. — Mimicry. The appearance of
crab-spiders. Their haunts. Protective
coloration and resemblance. Habits corre-
lated with structure. Probable origin of
" mimicry n ....... 52

IX. Wolf-Spiders. General habits. Semi-aquatic
species. Nomads and settlers. Structure.
Eyes. Lycosa picta. A colony in full swing.
The burrow. Egg-bags. Recognition of
cocoons. Want of discrimination. The
Tarantula, Its haunts and habits. The
death -stroke. The burrow and its parapet.
Sunning the cocoon. Carrying the young.
Poisonous properties 58

X. Jumping Spiders. The Zebra Spider. Its struc-
ture. Its wonderful eyes. Hunting its prey.
The use of the drag-line. Sight in jumping
spiders. Love dances. Sham-fights. A
remarkable piece of research . 7B

XI. Theraphosid Spiders. Sub-division of the Order.

Mandibles. Ahjpus and its nest. Its habits.
Aviculariidae. A giant spider. Trap-door
nests. Method of burrowing. " Bird-eaters,"
and their habits. Duyesiella. Poor sight but
remarkable sense of touch. Psalmopoeus
in captivity 87

XII. Stridulation. How sound is produced in Arthro-

poda. Its purposes. Popular mistakes.
Spines and Keys. The purring spider . 105

x CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

XIII. The Spinning Apparatus. Spinnerets. Their

mobility. Spools and spigots. Glands. Ar-
rangement in Epeira. No interweaving of
lines. Functions of glands. Spinning opera-
tions. The Oibellum. The feet of spiders . 110

XIV. The Enemies of Spiders. Cannabalism. Egg

parasites. Moulting. Starvation. Body
parasites. Solitary wasps. A gruesome fate 120

XV. Concluding Reflexions. The "use" of spiders.

Wide range of habits. Complexity of instincts.
The mystery of the egg. The storage of
energy. Economy in diet. Conclusion . 126

LITERATURE 133

INDEX 135

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Frontispiece. The Banana Spider.
FIG.

1. A Spider, a Mite and a Harvestman . . 9

2. The Garden-spider and its snare . . 15

3. Stretching the viscid line 19

4. Preparing for flight . . 35

5. Agelena at work . . .... 44

6. A Crab-spider . 53

7. Wolf-spiders 64

8. A Jumping Spider 77

9. The eyes of a Jumping Spider 78

10. The love dance 84

11. Stridulating "keys" . ... 108

12. Spinnerets 114

13. Spiders' feet 119

CHAPTER I

A SURVEY OF THE FIELD

THERE are certain days of the year when the
immense wealth of spider industry going on all
around us is revealed in a way calculated to strike
even the least observant. We all know — and derive
no peculiarly pleasant thrill from the knowledge-
that we can, if so minded, find abundance of cobwebs
and their occupants by visiting the cellar or the tool-
house ; and probably we have all at times noticed,
with a languid interest, large circular webs on our
favourite rose-bushes, with a spider motionless in the
centre.

But some spring or autumn morning, when the
night has been foggy and the sun has only just
succeeded in dispersing the mists, every bush and
hedge is seen to be draped, every square foot of lawn
and meadow to be carpeted with spiders' silk. There
has been no special activity in the domain of these
creatures, but every silken line is beaded with drops
perhaps fifty times its diameter, and what yesterday

W. 8. 1

2 SPIDERS [CH.

required careful observation to detect is now visible
yards away, and we realise for once something of
the prodigious activity constantly going on though
ordinarily unnoted.

And it never entirely ceases. True hibernation,
if it ever occurs, is not the rule among spiders, and
there is no time of the year when some species may
not be found at work. Beat trees or bushes over an
old umbrella, or sweep grass and herbage with a
sweeping net in summer, and you will never draw a
blank — some spiders are sure to be found. In winter
such measures are profitless, but if you take the
trouble to grub among ground vegetation, or shake
fallen leaves over a newspaper, or search under stones
or logs of wood you will have no difficulty in finding
spiders enough, and by no means dormant. I have
even seen an enthusiastic collector remove inches of
snow and disinter rare species from among the roots
of the grass beneath !

Spiders, then, are plentiful enough, and it is not
only individuals that are numerous but there are
vastly more kinds or species than most people dream
of. The Rev. 0. Pickard- Cambridge, in a book under
the modest title of The Spiders of Dorset in-
dispensable to all British collectors, quaintly observes
that most of his friends claim acquaintance with
three kinds of spiders — the garden spider, the harvest
spider and the little red spider — two of which, as it

i] A SURVEY OF THE FIELD 3

happens, are not spiders at all. Yet the British List
contains about five hundred and fifty species, and
the spiders of the world, though only very partially
investigated, already include many thousands of
known and described forms.

In this little work we shall not at all consider the
spider tribe from the collector's point of view. We
shall concern ourselves rather with habits and modes
of life and such structural modifications as are
correlated therewith. Certain well-defined groups of
spiders we shall recognise, but specific names will
interest us little. And we might do worse than step
out on such a spring morning as we have imagined
and rapidly survey the field which lies open for our
investigation.

First, then, examine a little more closely one of
the garden bushes in which the spiders have been so
busy, and the chances are that three different types
of snare will be readily distinguishable. There are
sure to be some of the familiar wheel-like snares of
Epeira, but note also the fine-spun hammocks of
Linyphia with stay-lines above and below, and the
irregular labyrinths of Theridion, its lines crossing
and recrossing without apparent method. These are
sedentary spiders, and always to be found at home.
All spiders spin for some purpose or other, but
these — or at all events Epeira — have brought the art
to its highest perfection. Leave them for the present

1—2

4 SPIDERS [CH.

and examine a sunny wall or fence. You may
chance to see a little zebra-striped, flat-bodied spider
exploring the surface and directing its opera-glass-
like eyes in all directions in search of prey. This is
one of the Attidae or jumping spiders — few and
sober-coloured in this country, but extraordinarily
abundant and often extremely beautiful in tropical
regions. Pause at the iron railing before leaving the
garden and observe how the topmost bar and the
knobs which crown the uprights are alive with spiders,
mostly very small, and obviously of many different
kinds, extremely busy about something that it may
be worth while to investigate later ; then go on into
the lane, and note, in the banks of the hedgerows the
great sheet- webs and tubes of Agelena, a near relative
of the house-spider, but with a cobweb, thanks to its
situation, comparatively free from accumulations of
dust and filth.

The creatures skipping, dry-shod, on the surface
of the river or pond, though often called water-
spiders, are true insects. The real water-spider,
Argyroneta, which, though air-breathing, spends
most of its time below the surface of the water, is
not to be found everywhere, but there are many
riparian species which are semi-amphibious in their
habits and have no objection to a wetting.

Finally, turn into the wood and look carefully on
the ground, especially where last year's leaves are

n] WHAT IS A SPIDER?

still lying'. You are certain to see a few — and may
very likely see countless myriads — of sober coloured,
rapidly moving "wolf-spiders' (Lycosidae), roaming
in quest of food. No stay-at-homes, these, but rovers,
trusting to speed and agility, and not to guile, for
their food supply.

All the spiders we have observed so far are in active
pursuit of their daily business, but if we turn over
stones, or logs, or look under sheets of loose bark,
we shall find others, quiescent for the moment, but
waiting for nightfall to begin their operations.

But we have probably seen enough to show that a
pretty wide field for investigation lies immediately
at hand, and that a detailed study of what we have
cursorily glanced at will occupy us so long that we
shall have little time for considering the spiders of
other lands. In the first place, however, we had
better make quite sure of what is meant by a spider.

CHAPTER II

WHAT IS A SPIDER?

NOT many years ago the group Insecta was
held even by Zoologists to include numberless small
creatures — centipedes, spiders, mites, etc. — which
further study has shown to present essential
differences of structure, and in popular language

6 SPIDERS [CH.

any fairly minute animal is still an insect, just
as any insect is popularly a "fly' -or, in the
United States, a "bug." Scientifically the use of
the term Insect is now much restricted, though still
extensive enough in all conscience, since it includes
many more than a quarter of a million known species.
Zoologists recognise a large group of animals charac-
terised by having no internal skeleton but a more or
less firm external coating of a peculiar substance called
chitin, often strengthened by calcareous deposits,
which necessitates the presence of joints in their
bodies, and especially in their limbs if they are to
move freely, just as medieval suits of armour required
to be jointed. These are the Arthropoda. One sub-
division of this group consists of aquatic animals,
breathing by gills, and known as Crustacea. Crabs,
lobsters, shrimps and " water-fleas " are familiar
examples, and with the exception of the so-called
land-crabs the only Crustaceans habitually found on
land are wood-lice.

The other Arthropoda are air-breathing, and
since their characteristic breathing organs are
branching tubes known as tracheae, the term
Tracheata is sometimes used to include them all.
They fall naturally into three divisions, the Myriapoda,
the Insecta and the Arachnida, and it is in this
last-named division that we shall find the spiders.

The Myriapoda are the centipedes and millipedes,

ir] WHAT IS A SPIDER? 7

and having said this we may dismiss them, for insects
and arachnids are strictly limited as to legs ; and no
myriapod can ever be mistaken for a spider.

The Arachnida are so varied in structure that it
is not easy to give characteristics common to them
all, and to any general statement there are bound to
be exceptions, but for practical purposes it may be
said that while an insect, when mature, has only six
legs, and a pair of feelers or antennae of quite
different structure, Arachnids have normally eight
legs, and their feeling organs are not antennae but
leg-like " pedipalps."

Most insects are distinguishable at once by the
possession of wings, which are never found among
the Arachnida, and they generally undergo a marked
transformation or metamorphosis in their progress
from the egg to maturity, taking on at first the form
of a caterpillar or grub and then that of a chrysalis ;
but as there are many wingless insects and many in
which the metamorphosis is very slight, the test
supplied by these characteristics is only of partial
application, and we shall do better to rely on the
number of legs, and the nature of the feeling organs.
If, therefore, we find a small wingless animal with
eight legs and a pair of feelers which are not thread-
like but much of the same character as the legs,
though not used for locomotion, we may be sure that
we are concerned with an Arachnid.

8 SPIDERS [CH.

But is it a spider ?

Now some groups of the Arachnida may be put
out of court at once as having an appearance so
characteristic that no confusion is possible. Such
are the Scorpions, and the minute Chernetidea or
"False Scorpions," but this cannot be said of the
Phalangidea or " harvestmen " or of the Acarina or
" Mites," members of which groups not only may be,
but frequently are popularly taken for spiders. In
fact the Phalangidea are very commonly spoken of as
"harvest spiders' and the "red spider' is a mite.
A very brief inspection, however, with a pocket lens
will settle the matter without the least difficulty.

A spider's body consists of two parts, a cephalo-
thorax (head + thorax) and an abdomen. There is a
waist, but no neck. The eight legs are attached to
the cephalo thorax, and the abdomen is not segmented
or ringed like that of an insect, but entire, and bears
at its extremity or on its under surface a little group
of spinnerets or finger-like projections from which the
spider's silk proceeds. For the moment these three
characteristics will suffice — the "waist" behind the leg-
bearing portion of the body, the unsegmented, legless,
abdomen, and the spinnerets (fig. 1 B\ A harvest-
man, for instance, lacks the waist, and its abdomen is
segmented. Mites are of very varied form and in
some the body is more or less divided into two
portions, but at least two pairs of legs will be found

II]

WHAT IS A SPIDER?

to be attached to the hinder portion ; and neither
harvestmen nor mites possess the spinnerets which

E

Fig. 1. A, a Mite ; B, a Spider ; C, a Phalangicl.

are the most striking characteristic of the spider ;
some mites — like the "red spider' -can spin, but

10 SPIDERS [CH.

•

the mechanism by which that operation is performed
is of quite a different nature.

Having, then, very readily determined our speci-
men to be a true spider, we may as well use it to
note some further structural points the detailed
examination of which may be deferred till we have
considered their functions. Note the jaws orchelicerae,
consisting of a stout basal part and a fang which,
when not in use, is shut down like the blade of a
knife ; note the pedipalps or feelers, exactly like
small legs, but showing by their action that their
function is sensory and not locomotor. If they are
knobbed at the end, the specimen is a male, otherwise
it is a female or as yet immature. Look closely at
the front part of the cephalothorax, and several eyes
will be visible — probably eight. They are not
compound — divided into innumerable facets, like
those of insects — but simple and smooth, though to
make sure of this the use of a microscope would be
necessary. Finally, obtain a view of the under
surface of the abdomen, and note in front, on either
side of the middle line, two semilunar patches of a
lighter colour. These are the " lung-books," -special
breathing organs peculiar to these animals ; two is
the usual number, though certain spiders possess a
second pair behind the first.

But the spinning mammillae or spinnerets are
still more "characteristic and more easily seen, though,

n] WHAT IS A SPIDER? 11

curiously enough, it is not among the cleverest
spinners that they are most conspicuous. In the family
to which most of the cellar spiders belong (Agelenidae)
and in the elongate brown or mouse-coloured spiders
found lurking under stones (Drassidae) they are
visible as little finger-like projections at the posterior
end of the abdomen, but if we have taken our
specimen from a circular web (Epeiridae) we shall
have to look for them more closely. In these spiders
they are beneath the abdomen near its termination,
and are not visible from above. Moreover when at
rest their tips are applied together so that they form
a small rosette in surface-view, or, in profile, a slight
cone.

The best way to capture a spider for examination
is to induce it to run up into a small glass specimen
tube — for spiders readily part with their legs if
handled roughly — and if we have adopted this method
we shall see the spinnerets in use as the animal
crawls about the tube. It will not move without
first attaching a silken cable to the glass, and this
cable lengthens as the spider progresses, so that
before long the interior of the tube will be a network
of silken threads, and its sides will be flecked with
little white specks where the threads have been
re-attached for a new departure ; and by observing
closely we shall be able to note the extreme mobility
of the spinnerets in action.

12 SPIDERS [CH.

All spiders spin, but it is by no means all spiders
that make snares for the purpose of catching prey.
The fundamental purpose of the spinning organs
seems to be to connect the spider with its point
of departure. The jumping spiders (Aitidae) make
no snare, but this "drag-line" as it has been called
comes in very useful when stalking prey on the
vertical surface of a wall, when a miscalculation at
the moment of pouncing upon it would entail a
considerable fall were it not for such an anchorage.
It can hardly be doubted — though of course it is
incapable of proof — that all the more complicated
spinning operations originated in this universal spider
habit, but all known spiders have learnt to apply
their power of making silk to other purposes. If
they do not make snares they at least spin "cocoons"
for the protection of their eggs, and if they have a
definite home from which they emerge to seek food,
such a retreat is always more or less lined with silk.
It is clear that a spider cocoon is quite different from
that of an insect ; it encloses the eggs and is
manufactured by the mother, whereas among the
insects the larva makes the cocoon for the protection
of the pupa or chrysalis into which it is about to turn.
However far from exhaustive the foregoing study
of spider structure may be it Avill suffice for our
purposes, at least for the present, and we may
proceed at once to an investigation of one of the

in] THE CIRCULAR SNARE

most remarkable achievements in the way of spinning
-the familiar circular snare or wheel-web of the
garden spider.

CHAPTER III

THE CIRCULAR SNARE

SELECT the most perfect circular snare at hand,
and examine it attentively. In the autumn, when the
large garden-spider, Epeira diademata (fig. 2 A), is
mature, it will probably be easy to find such a snare
a foot or more in diameter. It is stretched within an
irregular frame of foundation lines of extra thickness
and strength, and consists of a large number of radii
or spokes connected by what appear to be a series
of concentric circles, in reality a continuous spiral,
like the hair-spring of a watch. The central portion
is different from the rest of the wheel. Probably in
the very centre there is a vacant space and round
this a hub, consisting of a spiral line different in
appearance from that of the main spiral. It does
not leave a radius exactly at the point where it
trikes it, and the rather zig-zag effect has caused
it to be known as the "notched zone." Touch the
web and it adheres to the finger, but all its lines are
not adhesive. Test this with some fine-pointed

14 SPIDERS [CH.

implement, and the foundation lines, the radii and
the notched zone will give negative results ; the
spiral line alone is viscid, and its viscidity is due to
the presence of thousands of little beads of gummy
matter strung on a thin elastic thread. The vast
number and uniformity of these beads — estimated at
120,000 on a large web — excited the wonder and
admiration of naturalists until it was proved that
they were not deposited by the spider as beads at all,
but as a uniform coating of viscid matter which
subsequently arranged itself into equidistant globules
easily explicable by the physicist. Indeed precisely
the same phenomenon is seen on a dew-laden web,
where similar but very much larger beads of water
decorate all the lines.

From the hub of the wheel we shall very likely
notice a rather stout cable diverging from the plane
of the snare and leading to a nest of leaves spun
together. Here the spider is to be found when not
on duty in the centre of the wheel, and here it con-
structs its egg-cocoons.

This, then, is the complete circular snare, but we
shall understand it much better if we watch the
spider at work in its construction.

The first business of the spider is to lay down the
foundation lines. Any sort of trapezium — or even a
triangle if large enough — in a more or less vertical
plane will suffice, and under some circumstances the

Ill]

THE CIRCULAR SNARE

15

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16 SPIDERS [CH.

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operation is simple enough. The spider attaches a
line at the point of departure and crawls along,
spinning as it goes and holding up the newly-spun
thread by the claws of one of its hind feet, till it
reaches a suitable spot for its farthest limit. It then
hauls in the slack and makes it fast. It will probably
return along the line thus laid down — still spinning-
to the starting point, thus doubling the strength of
the cable, and indeed a large spider will often
repeat this operation several times. Now the upper
boundary of the future web is secured. It is next
necessary to find points of attachment for the lower
boundary, and the spider either drops or climbs
down — always carrying a line — from one of the ends
of the upper line till it reaches a spot suitable for its
purpose, and the previous performance is repeated.
If there is any difficulty about a fourth attachment it
is always open to the spider to climb back along the
two lines already laid down, and by carrying a loose
line with it, to secure at all events a triangular
frame- work. This frame- work, whether trapezoid or
triangular, will be re-inforced several times and made
thoroughly trustworthy before the work of making
the actual snare is proceeded with.

Now the foregoing operation is obviously perfectly
simple in certain cases, as, for instance when a spider
has chosen lattice work, or the mouth of an empty
barrel as its "pitch," but snares may easily be found

in] THE CIRCULAR SNARE 17

in situations where such a mode of procedure seems
impossible. In a pine forest, for example, one may
see huge webs stretched at a great height from the
ground between boles ten feet apart ; or one may
find such a snare spread across a stream at a spot
where the trees on either side do not intermingle
their boughs. How in such cases does the spider
accomplish its purpose ?

There is little doubt that, wherever practicable,
the spider walks round, sometimes crawling quite an
astounding distance, but that it can at need, resort
to another method, is easily proved by a very simple
experiment in the house. Fill any vessel — a basin
or a bath — with water and arrange an upright post
in the middle, placing a spider upon it. If the air in
the room is absolutely still the captive is powerless
to escape, but if draughts are present it will sooner
or later disappear ; and it accomplishes this feat' by
emitting a thread which, caught by the air-current,
is drawn out from its spinnerets till it by and by
becomes entangled in the surrounding furniture.
This power of emitting silk to some little distance
and allowing the wind to draw it out is, as we shall
see, frequently exercised in the early life of many
spiders.

The foundation lines which may thus have given
the spider great trouble to secure, are of extreme
importance to it, and may serve for several snares in

w. s. 2

18 SPIDERS [CH.

succession. There is little hesitation or delay about
the subsequent operations. The spokes of the wheel
are readily formed by carrying lines across to opposite
points of the frame-work and uniting them where
they intersect. They are laid down in no special
order, but more or less alternation is generally
noticeable — apparently for the purpose of keeping
the tension equally balanced — and the spider will
occasionally desist in order to go and brace up the
frame-work with additional stays, which generally
have the effect of converting it to a polygon.

Before long the requisite number of fairly equi-
distant "spokes' or radii are visible, and then the
spider, starting from the centre, rapidly spins a
spiral thread consisting of a few coils only, to the
circumference, stepping from spoke to spoke. This
is only a temporary scaffolding and will not be
suffered to remain in the completed snare. If the
structure is touched at this stage of the operations
it does not adhere to the finger ; the viscid spiral
remains to be laid down. Though it does not hesitate
for a moment, the spider now works with a peculiar
deliberation, but the operation will be much better
understood by actual observation than by any amount
of description, and we shall only recommend the
reader to note that the new spiral is exceedingly
elastic and that at the moment of its attachment to
a spoke it is stretched and let go like the string of a

Ill]

THE CIRCULAR SNARE

19

bow. The spider seems carefully to avoid treading
on it as it proceeds, utilising the non-viscid spiral
scaffolding already described.

A little attention to the centre of the wheel, and
the snare is complete. Some species of Epeira

Fig. 3. Stretching the viscid spiral.

entirely remove the centre, leaving a -circular" empty
space, while others fill it with an irregular network
of threads.

How does the garden spider avoid getting caught
in its own web? We have shown that there are
many lines which are not viscid, and no doubt these

2—2

20 SPIDERS [CH.

are utilised as far as possible, but it can hardly
happen that the spider never touches adhesive
portions of the web with legs or body.

Possibly some explanation is furnished by an
ingenious experiment which Fabre performed. He
found that a glass rod, lightly smeared with oil, did
not adhere to the viscid spiral ; neither did a leg
freshly taken from a garden-spider unless allowed to
remain in contact for a considerable time. When,
however, this leg had been washed with bisulphide
of carbon, which dissolves any kind of oily substance,
it adhered at once. It would seem likelv, therefore,

«/ /

that the legs and body of the spider itself are
protected by some oily exudation from any danger of
adherence to its own lines.

CHAPTER IV

MENTAL POWERS OF SPIDERS

BEFORE leaving the garden-spider let us undertake
some little investigation of its mental powers — if it
possesses any. The commonest mistake with regard
to all animals is to interpret their actions from the
human standpoint, and to credit them with emotions
and with deliberate forethought of which there is in

iv] MENTAL POWERS OF SPIDERS 21

reality no proof whatever. The power to spin such a
complicated snare as we have just described predis-
poses us to attribute a high order of intelligence to
a creature capable of such an achievement, and when
it " shams death " on being disturbed we immediately
pronounce it "cunning." The wildest conclusions
are sometimes arrived at. One author, for instance,
states that he has seen an Attid spider "instructing
its young ones how to hunt ' and adds that " when-
ever an old one missed its leap, it would run from the
place and hide itself in some crevice as if ashamed of
its mismanagement." Such inferences, of course, were
entirely unwarranted from the facts observed. Now
the fact that a newly-hatched garden-spider can make
a complete snare without ever having seen the oper-
ation performed immediately relegates that action
to the realm of instinct, — not less wonderful than
intelligence perhaps, but certainly quite distinct from
it. With the much discussed origin of instinct we
are not here concerned, but a pure instinct differs
from intelligence in this : that it is due to inherited
nervous mechanism and results in actions the object
of which may be quite unknown to the actors.
There is no conscious adaptation of means to an end.
When a young spider spins a web there is not only
no evidence that it does so with the deliberate pur-
pose of catching flies, but many known facts go to
prove that it performs the feat, " because it feels as

22 SPIDERS [CH.

if it must," and is quite ignorant of the purpose to be
subserved.

It is no doubt quite beyond our power to ascertain
accurately the mental condition of a spider, but it is
perfectly easy to make a few illuminating experiments
on two points which have a very decided bearing on
intelligence : — the development of the senses, and the
degree of what has been called educability, or the
power of learning from experience. To what extent can
the spider see, hear, smell, feel, taste ? How far is it
capable of varying its action as the result of ex-
perience ? The senses, as far as we know, are the
principal — if not the only — avenues by which external
impressions can reach the seat of intelligence, and
there is no surer indication of the intelligence of an
animal than the degree to which it is susceptible of
education. Probably most readers know the immor-
tal story of the pike cited by Darwin in the Descent
of Man. The pike was in an aquarium, separated by
a sheet of glass from a tank in which were numerous
small fish. Not till three months had expired
did the pike cease to dash itself against the glass
partition in its attempts to seize the fish in the neigh-
bouring tank. It then desisted and had evidently
learnt something — but what? After three months,
the glass partition was removed, but the pike refused
to attack those particular fish, though it immediately
seized any new specimens introduced to the tank. All

iv] MENTAL POWERS OF SPIDERS 23

that it had apparently learnt was that an attack on a
particular fish resulted in a violent blow on the nose.
Some degree of intelligence must be conceded to the
pike, but it can hardly be considered of a high
order.

Now the garden-spider possesses eight eyes, and
might be expected to see fairly well, but the ex-
perimenter will very soon come to the conclusion that
the habitual use it makes of them — at all events in
day-light — is very slight. Touch a web with a vibrat-
ing tuning-fork and the spider will rush to the spot
and investigate the instrument with its fore-legs
before distinguishing it from a fly. Remember, how-
ever, that this is only true of what are sometimes
called sedentary spiders ; species which hunt their
prey have much better vision. Yet even among
sedentary spiders the power of sight is not negligible,
for a most trustworthy observer states that he has
several times seen Meta segmentata, a very common
small Epeirid, drop from its web to secure an insect
on the ground beneath, and return with it by way of
the drop line, and the same action has been observed
in the case of Theridion, which spins an irregular
snare.

There are peculiar difficulties attending experi-
ments on the subject of hearing. An absolutely deaf
person may be aAvare of the sounding of a deep organ
note through the sense of feeling, and a well-known

24 SPIDERS [CH.

experimenter was on the point of drawing interesting
conclusions from the behaviour of a spider in response
to the notes of a flute, when he found that precisely
the same results were obtained by a soundless puff of
air. It seems hardly possible to make sure, in the
case of a spider in a snare, that the sound vibrations
are not felt, apart from any sense of hearing, and it
is a remarkable fact that it is only the snare-spinning
spiders that make any response to sounds : — free-
roving spiders are apparently quite deaf.

In experimenting with sound we must take two
precautions: the instrument used must not necessi-
tate any marked action which may be visible to the
spider, nor must it give rise to palpable air-currents.
These requirements are best met by a tuning-fork of
not too low a pitch. We cannot feel the air vibra-
tions emanating from it, but can only perceive them
by the ear, but we have no proof that the spider's
sense of touch ceases precisely at the same point as
our own. However, no better instrument for experi-
ment seems to be available, so we take a tuning-fork,
and approach it cautiously — in the quiescent state-
towards the spider, stationed, we will suppose, in the
centre of its snare. No notice is taken, and we care-
fully withdraw it, set it vibrating, and approach it
again in the same manner. There is now generally
a response, the spider raising its front legs and
extending them in the direction of the fork, or, if the

iv] MENTAL POWERS OF SPIDERS 25

sound is loud, dropping suddenly by a thread and
remaining suspended some inches below the snare.
The experiment should be repeated several times
with the fork sometimes still, sometimes vibrating,
and the conclusion arrived at will be that the spider
is aware of the vibrating fork — but by which sense ?
It is noteworthy that a fork giving a low note is
alwavs most effective.

V

Now here is a very remarkable fact. In two
widely different groups of spiders — the Theraphosidae
or so called " bird-eating spiders" and the Theridiidae
-there are species with a stridulating or sound-
making apparatus, and we should hardly expect a deaf
creature to evolve an elaborate mechanism for the
production of sound. This is a matter, however, that
we shall discuss later.

No amount of research has succeeded in localising
the sense of hearing in spiders, supposing it to exist.
The creature may lose any of its five pairs of limbs
(four pairs of legs and one pair of pedipalps) without
alteration in its response to sound. If the front legs
are missing the second pair are raised when the vibrat-
ing fork is approached.

It is fairly easy to test the sense of smell in these
creatures, the only necessary precaution being that
no acid or pungent substances capable of having an
irritating effect on the skin, such as vinegar or
ammonia, must be employed. Such perfumes as

26 SPIDERS [CH.

lavender or heliotrope are free from this defect.
Take a clean glass rod and present it to the spider
as before, and no notice is taken. Now dip it in oil
of lavender, allow it to dry, and present it again.
Most spiders respond to such a test, Epeirids gener-
ally raising the abdomen, and rubbing one or other
of the legs against the jaws, while jumping spiders
generally raise the head and back away from the rod.
Different essences produce different effects, but there
is seldom any doubt that the creature is aware of
their presence ; it is not deficient in the sense of
smell, but its localisation has hitherto baffled research.
The sense of taste does not seem to have been
made the subject of any definite experiments among
spiders, though such experiments might well lead to
interesting conclusions, and the reader might do worse
than undertake some on his own account. It would
be easy, for instance, to supply a garden-spider with
various insects which are generally rejected by other
insectivorous animals, and to note its behaviour. It
might refuse to have anything to do with them, or it
might sample them and turn away in disgust. In the
first case the explanation might be that it was warned
of their probably evil taste by their coloration or
smell, but in any case here is an interesting little
field for research. It is the general belief among
arachnologists that the sense of taste is well de-
veloped among spiders, and it is highly improbable

iv] MENTAL POWERS OF SPIDERS 27

that a sense so necessary for the discrimination of
suitable food should be lacking in animals with so
respectable a sensory equipment.

There is no doubt at all that the sense of touch
is extremely well developed in spiders, especially
perhaps, in the sedentary groups, and it is probable
that, under ordinary cirumstances, the garden-spider
works almost entirely by its guidance. Whether in
the centre of the web or in its retreat under a neigh-
bouring leaf it is in direct communication with every
part of its snare by silken lines, and the least
disturbance usually suffices to bring it to the spot ;
and then, as Ave have said, it will generally touch the
disturbing object, however unpromising in appearance,
before deciding on its line of action. There is little
doubt that many of the numerous hairs and bristles
with which its limbs are furnished are distinctly
sensory in function.

So much, then, as to the senses of spiders; but
what about their " educability ' -their power of
learning from experience ? Here is evidently a wide
subject, and a difficult one full of pit-falls for the
unwary, but we may nevertheless draw some inferences
from the quite elementary experiments on the senses
which have been outlined above. A spider drops on
account of the sounding of the tuning-fork in its
neighbourhood; can it be educated to take no notice
of the sound after repeatedly finding that no evil

28 SPIDERS [CH.

consequences follow? It will perhaps be most in-
structive to give in a condensed form the results
of an actual experiment selected from many per-
formed by two American arachnologists, George and
Elizabeth Peckham, whose researches have thrown
more light than any others upon the mental equip-
ment of spiders. They had an individual of the
small Epeirid species Cyclosa conica under obser-
vation for a month, and tested it almost daily
with the tuning-fork. At the sound of the fork the
spider would drop ; when it had recovered itself and
returned to the snare the fork would be sounded again,
and so on. Now on July 20 the spider fell nine times
successively — the last three times only an inch or
two — and then took no further notice of the vibrating
fork. On subsequent days, until August 5, she fell
either five, six or seven times, except on two occasions
when a day's test had been omitted, and then eleven

*/

successive falls occurred before the spider ceased to
respond. On August 5 she seemed startled at the
sound but did not fall, though the fork was sounded
nine times. During the remainder of the experiment
she generally remained perfectly indifferent to the
fork, though on one or two occasions she partially
forgot her lesson and dropped a very short distance,
immediately recovering herself.

Observe that the basis of educability is memory.
For a fortnight, in the case of this particular spider,

iv] MENTAL POWERS OF SPIDERS 29

the lesson learnt on one day seemed to be entirely
forgotten the next morning, but thereafter a definite
change of habit seemed to result. This does not
appear a very great intellectual achievement, but it
is by no means despicable, for it must be borne in
mind that the habit of dropping when alarmed is
almost the only means of defence such a spider
possesses, and the instinct which prompts it must be
very strongly ingrained. In the words of the experi-
menters— "Taking this into consideration, it seems
remarkable that one of them should so soon have
learned the sound of the vibrating fork, and should
have modified her action accordingly."

This single experiment has been here described in
some detail largely for the purpose of impressing the
reader with the importance of reducing the problem
to its simplest terms before any inferences are drawn,
and it may well act as a model for any which he may
be inclined to undertake on his own account. The
more complicated the action, the more likely is the
experimenter to read into it motives and mental
operations which exist only in his own imagination,
and with this warning we must take leave of a subject
which might tempt us to encroach too much on an
allotted space.

30 SPIDERS [CH.

CHAPTER V

TRAP-SNARES AND BALLOONS

THERE are some interesting variants of the
circular snare spun by some exotic Epeirids. One
North American species spins it in a horizontal
position and then raises the centre, and, by an
elaborate system of stay lines from above, converts it
into a very accurately shaped dome. A whole group
of orb-weavers habitually decorate a sector of the
snare with bands of flocculent silk, the object of
which for a long time puzzled arachnologists, till
it was observed that the spider drew upon this
reserve supply of material to wrap up particularly
obstreperous insects. It is not unusual for a spider of
one of the common species to remove a whole sector
of the snare, and by stretching a line from the centre
to a place of retreat along the gap thus formed, to
provide an unencumbered avenue between its home
and its post when on duty. For it must not be
forgotten that a spider has to walk warily on its own
web, and must avoid, as far as possible, treading on
the adhesive lines, or delay and damage to the
structure are sure to ensue.

As a rule the circular snares of the different
British species are of a very uniform pattern,

v] TRAP-SNARES AND BALLOONS 31

differing chiefly in the degree of neatness with which
they are constructed, and in certain minor details of
the "hub," but we have one spider, Hyptiotes
paradoxm — an exceedingly rare species, scarcely
ever seen beyond the limits of the New Forest-
winch makes such a strange snare that it seems a
pity to omit all mention of it. It consists of a sector

-about one sixth of the full circle — comprising about
four radii with cross lines. From the point where
the radii meet, a " trap-line ' connects the sector to
another point of attachment ; on, or rather under,
this trap-line, the spider takes up its position, hauling
it in so as to tighten the web and to leave a slack
portion of the line between the points where it holds
on by its front and hind legs. When an insect
impinges on the web and causes it to tremble, the
spider immediately lets go with its fore legs, and the
consequent vibration of the web helps to entangle its
prey.

The circular snare is the highest form of spinning
work attained by spiders, and there is little tempta-
tion to expend much time in studying the cruder
structures that meet the eye everywhere, but two
other types are worth a brief notice. Examine any
garden bush — particularly a holly bush, of which the
rather rigid leaves provide excellent points of support

-and you will find numberless small webs made
without any discoverable method, the lines crossing

32 SPIDERS [CH.

one another at random in all directions. These are
the snares of some species of Theridion, and if the
webs lack interest the spiders themselves are worth
looking at, for they are nearly always quite prettily
ornamented.

The other common type of snare is that of
Linyphia. It is larger and of more definite design,
consisting of a finely-spun hammock stretched hori-
zontally, and surmounted by a labyrinth of irregular
lines. Flies entangled in the labyrinth fall upon the
hammock in their struggles to escape, and the spider
is at hand — always on the under surface of the ham-
mock— to ensure their capture.

Haying noted these three common types of snare,
let us leave the garden and choose a new field for our
observations.

If it is an absolutely calm sunny October morning-
it will be a suitable occasion for visiting an iron
railing, the "knobbier' the better. Early summer
will do, but late autumn is generally more fruitful.
Almost any railing will serve, but the most satisfactory
kind is one with the uprights surmounted by round
knobs, and not by spikes. We see at once that the
knobs, and the upper rail are glistening with silken
lines ; many spiders have obviously been at work there.
Lines streak the top-rail in all directions, stretch
from knob to rail, or from knob to knob if not too
distant, while here and there loose ends or streamers

v] TRAP-SNARES AND BALLOONS 33

flutter gently in the slight currents of air. And
closer inspection reveals various small objects moving
among this labyrinth of threads. Most of them are
spiders, though insects, and particularly weevils, are
not wanting. No doubt the weevils know their own
business, though the writer has not been taken into
their confidence, but the spiders are the particular
object of our investigation. And first of all note
that it is a veritable race-congress of spiders; the
most varied groups are represented. Wolf-spiders
(Lycosidae) which under ordinary circumstances
rarely leave the ground are found in company with
crab- spiders (Thomisidae), jumping spiders (Attidae),
as well as Epeiridae and Theridiidae of which we
already know something. They have only one thing
in common — they are either small species or small
and immature specimens of larger species. They seem
to be scrambling about in a meaningless sort of way,
paying little or no attention to each other — which is
odd, for spiders are terrible cannibals, and as a
general thing it would be exceedingly unsafe for a
small spider to rub shoulders with a larger one of
a different species.

The majority of them are very small, more or less
black, Theridiicl spiders,' the "micros' of the tribe,
and their proper home is among the roots of grass
and herbage. Many of these are interesting objects
for the microscope — especially if males — because of

w. s. 3

34 SPIDERS [CH.

the remarkable protuberances or turrets which rise
from their heads and bear their eyes as on a watch
tower.

These spiders are clearly not "out" for icod ;
they have left their ordinary beat for quite another
purpose, and we shall probably not have to wait long
before discovering it. Some one of the group ceases
its apparently purposeless wandering, and, turning its
head in the direction of what slight wind there is,
raises its fore-body to the full extent of its straightened
legs, and elevates its abdomen to the utmost. Now
watch closely — using a handglass if you have one — and
you will see streamers of silk proceeding from its
spinnerets. They are shot out for a short distance
and then the air current draws them out further till
they often extend for several feet, though their
extreme fineness makes it almost impossible to form
an accurate judgment of their length. Meanwhile
the spider has not merely been standing on its
"toes," -it has been firmly gripping the silken lines
on the railings with its claws. Soon it feels the pull
of the streaming threads, and when the tension is
sufficient it lets go with all its claws simultaneously,
vaults into the air and sails away. Sometimes a start

«/

is made prematurely and the insufficient buoyancy of
the streamers causes the spider to descend almost at
once, and a IICAV start is made.

This, then, is the habitual method by which new

v]

TRAP-SNARES AND BALLOONS

broods of spiders distribute themselves, especially the
sedentary kinds which would otherwise soon become
over crowded in the neighbourhood of the parent
nest. And we really need not have sought out
a railing at all except for its very great convenience
of observation. The same thing is going on every-

Fig. 4. Young spider preparing for an aerial voyage.

where. It largely accounts for the astonishing carpet
of silk that the dew reveals to us on lawns and
meadows at such times of the year. Young spiders
have been busy from early dawn crawling over the
grass, climbing the higher blades, and setting sail,
and the whole field is covered with their lines.
Railings come in handy as furnishing an elevated

3-2

36 SPIDERS [CH.

starting point, but any shrub or bush will do, and
young spiders have been seen setting sail from the
parent web itself.

McCook has given some interesting notes of his
own observations on aeronautic spiders. He followed
an Attid spider fifty feet till it was carried upward
out of sight in a current of air. A Lycosid dis-
appeared in the same way after being followed — at
a run — for a hundred feet. The largest Epeirid he
ever saw taking flight was " the size of a marrowfat
pea, say one-fourth of an inch long. After having
floated over a field and above a hedgerow, it crossed
a road and anchored upon the top of a young tree."
But perhaps his most interesting observation was on
the ability of spiders to control in some measure the
duration of their flight by reefing their sails if they
wish to descend, for 'he saw a ballooning spider
collecting some of the streamers into a ball of silk
which accumulated near its mouth as it gradually
sank to earth.

The phenomenon known as " gossamer'1 has
puzzled people for centuries, and English poetical
literature is full of allusions to it. Chaucer classes
it with " ebbe and floud " as an unsolved riddle, and
Spenser, Quarles and Thomson all make mention of
it, generally embodying the popular belief that it
somehow had its origin in dew. " Scorched deaw '
Spenser calls it, while Thomson's expression is " dew

v] TRAP-SNARES AND BALLOONS 37

evaporate." The phenomenon in question is the
occasional appearance of vast numbers of silken
flakes which fill the air, and which in some recorded
instances extend over many square miles and to a
height of several hundred feet. Our observations
will have given a clue to its origin which is entirely
attributable to spiders, and in large measure to their
ballooning habit, though no doubt reinforced by a
large quantity of silk spun for other purposes and
caught up into the air by the breeze. For a vivid
account of such a shower the reader is referred
to Letter LXV of White's Natural History of
Selborne, and Darwin in his Naturalist's Voyage
(Chap. VIII) records a case of the "gossamer spider"
descending in multitudes on the "Beagle' when
sixty miles from land.

In the ballooning habit we have the probable
explanation of the wide distribution of certain
species of spiders which seem at first exceedingly
ill adapted for covering large distances. The Hunts-
man Spider, Heteropoda venatorius, is practically
cosmopolitan in tropical and sub-tropical regions and
the usual view has been that ships have conveyed it
from port to port. McCook, however, gives several
reasons for believing that the trade winds have much
more to do with the matter, and this may well be the
case, though both agencies have doubtless been at
work.

38 SPIDERS [CH.

Very likely it was not obvious to the reader why
he Avas recommended to select a particularly calm,
sunny autumn day for his study of spider aeronautics ;
a strong steady breeze might well appear more
suitable for the purpose. Yet he would find these
operations at a standstill on a windy day, and the
best possible conditions are a still warm morning
after a spell of cooler weather. The lightest air-
currents serve to float the delicate silken threads, and,
what is more important, the increase of temperature
causes an upward draught which rapidly carries the
spider to a useful height where it sails gently away
instead of being swept roughly over the surface of
the ground.

CHAPTER VI

AGELENA

BEFORE going farther afield, let us investigate
one of the spinners of the sheet-webs that are so
unpleasantly familiar in the house. We object to
them on very obvious grounds, first as evidence
of neglect and bad housewifery, and secondly as
repulsive objects when covered by accumulations
of dust which their firm texture and their durability
make inevitable.

vi] AGELENA 39

The common house-spiders belong to the family
Agelenidae. It is quite likely that their original
home was in a warmer climate where they lived out
of doors, but that was long ago, and now they
uniformly select buildings of some sort for their
operations. They have, however, even in this country,
several open-air cousins, and most people know the
great sheet-web spider of the hedge-rows, though its
name — Agelena labyrinthica — may be new to them.
Its web consists of a closely woven wide-spreading
sheet connected with a tube of even denser material,
in the mouth of which the spider may generally be
seen lurking, a rather sinister object. If a better
view of the animal is desired it is only necessary to
agitate the web slightly and the spider runs forward
to investigate. It is a large species as British spiders
go — about three quarters of an inch in length — with
the abdomen rather prettily marked with oblique
white streaks.

It is very unlike our garden spider in certain
points of structure ; its body is more elongate and
rather rigid, with little play of action between the
cephalothorax and the abdomen ; its legs are notably
long, and so are two of its spinnerets, which can be
seen protruding beyond the abdomen as we look
down upon it.

But we shall gain little information by looking
at the completed web, and our best plan is to take

40 SPIDERS [CH.

the animal home and observe it in captivity. We
have prepared for its reception a box about a foot
square, with a gauze top and a movable glass front.

It is not such an easy matter to secure the spider,
which can run like a lamp-lighter, and which has a
way of escape at the lower end of its tube. The
safest way is suddenly to shut off this means of
retreat with the finger and thumb of the left hand
and simultaneously to present a glass phial at the
mouth of the tube ; the spider runs up into it and is
taken without the risk of injury. It is never
advisable to handle spiders, not because any British
species is formidable, but because they so readily
part with their limbs in order to escape, and the
chances are that only a mutilated specimen will be
obtained.

Now Agelena does not seem to be a particularly
engaging pet, but it has its points. In the first
place, it very quickly makes itself at home ; a short
time is spent in exploring its new quarters, but it
adapts itself almost at once to its changed situation.
Moreover it is of a peaceable and domestic disposition
and the male and female live amicably together,
which is far from being the case among the Epeiridae,
whose peculiar marital relations are often — quite
wrongly — attributed to the whole tribe of spiders. A
male garden- spider courts the female at the risk of
his life, and it is not surprising that he should evince

vi] AGELENA 41

great hesitation and caution in his advances. If his
attentions are unwelcome, or even if they have been
accepted, he will be promptly trussed up and eaten
unless he beats a hasty retreat. But with Ageleint
the conjugal relations are exemplary, and harmony
reigns in the home. The question of food is certainly
a difficulty, but if insects are let loose in the cage
the spider will attend to the catching of them. In
some cases raw meat has been found a satisfactory
substitute.

After a brief exploration of the box the captive
soon becomes busy, going to and fro across its cage
and attaching lines to the sides at some height up
from the floor. So fine is the work that for a long
time hardly anything is visible, and the movements
of the animal are the only clue to what is taking
place. By and by it becomes evident that a sort of
skeleton platform has been spun across the box,
upon Avhich the spider is able to walk. It is
continually strengthened by new threads, and braced
by stay -lines above and below. It has been hardly
possible to follow the operations by which this has
come about, and even now we are chiefly aware of
the existence of the platform because we see the
spider walking upon it ; its movements seemed very
scrambling and unmethodical, but they have resulted
in the foundation of the sheet-web and its terminal
tube. But now it begins to behave quite differently*

42 SPIDERS [CH.

and another phase of the work has clearly begun ; it
crawls about over the almost invisible foundation
lines with a most curious gait, using its long legs to
sway its body from side to side, raising and depressing
its abdomen at intervals, and as this motion continues
a beautiful gauzy sheet of incredibly fine texture
gradually grows into view. What is happening is
that the spider is strewing over the foundation
lines multitudinous threads from its long posterior
spinnerets, which are beset on their under surface
with numbers of hair-like spinning tubes from each
of which the silk is issuing. All day long the process
goes on, and by slow degrees the web increases in
density. Indeed for days after the structure is
complete the spider spends odd moments in going
over the ground again till the sheet, and especially
the tube proceeding from it to a corner of the box,
are so closely woven as to have become almost
opaque, and its occupant at length appears to be
satisfied with his handiwork, and retires into the
tube to wait patiently for casual visitors.

July is a good month in which to experiment with
Agelena, for if the captives include female specimens
some further spinning operations of a very complicated
description may be observed. The time of egg-laying
is at hand and elaborate preparations have to be
made, but if the experimenter wis) cs to sec Uie
whole process he must be prepared to sacrifice his

vi ] AG ELENA 43

night's rest, for the most critical part of the
performance takes place in the small hours of the
morning. We will describe what occurred in the
case of one Agelena.

The approaching oviposition was heralded several
hours beforehand by the animal commencing to
weave a hammock-like compartment from the roof
of the box and above the sheet- web. This chamber
was about four inches long and was constructed
precisely in the same manner as the sheet, to which
it was braced by lines from various points of its
under surface. Its construction occupied the whole
day previous to the laying of the eggs, and not until
half an hour before midnight was it completed.
Within this compartment, close to the roof, the
spider next wove a small sheet one inch long, working
diligently in an inverted position, ventral surface
upwards. After a quarter of an hour it rested for
an equal space, apparently exhausted by its prolonged
efforts. An hour and three quarters intermittent
work served to complete the sheet, the spider varying
the monotony of its sinuous walk round this small
area by occasionally walking over it and strengthening
the lines which attached its angles to the roof.

A marked change now became observable in the
manner oi working. The animal abandoned its in-
cessant to and fro motion but began to jerk its body
up towards the sheet, throwing silk strongly against

44

SPIDERS

[CH.

it. At the same time the posterior spinnerets were
actively rubbed together and the long posterior
spinnerets separated and brought together again with
a scissor-like action. The result of this performance
was to invest the under surface of the small sheet

£S -

I , \ p

Fig. 5. Agelena weaving her egg-cocoon.

with a coating of flossy silk quite unlike the ordinary
web in texture, the purpose of which soon became
evident, for at about a quarter past two the spider
began to deposit its eggs upwards, against this loose-
textured silk, aiding the egg-mass to adhere by

vi] AGELENA 45

occasional upward jerks of the body. This occupied
between five and ten minutes, and as soon as it was
accomplished the under surface of the egg-mass was
covered by a layer of flossy silk similar to that against
which it was laid, the eggs being thus entirely en-
veloped in a coating of soft loose-textured material.
This was next covered in by a sheet of firm texture
like that of the original web.

It might be supposed that the work was at length
finished and that a well-earned rest might be en-
joyed, but this was far from being the case. The
spider remained as active as ever though an hour or
two passed before the object of its industry was
evident. All this time it was incessantly climbing
backwards and forwards between the egg-sheet and
the hammock and generally scrimmaging round in
the most unaccountable way, but it gradually became
evident that the eggs were being enclosed in a
wonderful transparent box of filmy silk with the egg-
bearing sheet for its roof. By nine o'clock it was of
moderate strength and opacity, and the spider, having
worked "the clock round," no longer laboured con-
tinuously. Days elapsed, however, before it was
entirely finished to the satisfaction of the spider, which
remained all the time in close proximity to the box
and could with difficulty be frightened away, but
clung tenaciously to it when interfered with.

No\v this remarkable performance, which any

46 SPIDERS [CH.

reader endowed with sufficient patience may observe
for himself, gives food for thought. The spider has
never seen a cocoon constructed and has no model
to work by, and yet it performs with absolute pre-
cision all the stages, in their proper succession, of
a work which involves quite a number of different
spinning operations, nor does the absence of light by
which to work trouble it in the slightest. It seems
hard to believe that this is not a sign of high in-
telligence and that the spider is probably quite
unconscious of the object for which it has laboured
so long and so aptly. But how otherwise explain
this curious fact ? If the eggs are removed the
moment they are laid the work is continued precisely
as if they wrere still there. The box is laboriously
built round the place where they ought to be, and
the spider refuses to budge from the empty casket,
though there is no longer any treasure to guard.

Clearly as the egg-laying time approaches the
spider feels an irresistible blind impulse to perform
in a definite order certain complicated actions. It is
like a machine actuated by an internal spring, and
in the spider's case the internal spring is the in-
herited nervous mechanism we call instinct, which
urges it to actions which it is not in the least neces-
sary that it should understand.

vii] WATER-SPIDERS 47

CHAPTER VII

WATER-SPIDERS

HERE is the place to insert a short account of some
near relations of Agelena which we shall certainly
not meet in our walk, but of which the mode of life is
too interesting to be altogether passed over in silence.

We have seen that the class Crustacea (crabs,
shrimps etc.) is the great division of the Arthropoda
entirely adapted to an aquatic life, breathing, by
means of gills, the air which is dissolved in the water.
Insects and spiders are air-breathing, and properly
belong to the land ; yet there are many insects which
pass their early stages — often the greater portion of
their life — in the water, and some which are very
fairly at home there when adult. Such insects often
have gills when young, and are therefore at that
period true water animals, like the Crustacea.

The Arachnida — that division of the Arthropoda
to which the spiders belong — include a few groups
which permanently inhabit the sea, and could not
live on land. There are even some weird creatures
called Sea-spiders (Pycnogonids), but these do not
concern us, for they are very far removed from the
true spiders which are the subject of our investi-
gations.

48 SPIDERS [CH.

Now the true spiders are always air-breathing,
and if they venture into the water at all they must
frequently come up to the surface to breathe, or else
they must store up a reservoir of air beneath the
surface of the water if they are to avoid death by
drowning. Nevertheless some of them have been
hardy enough to encroach on the domain of the
Crustacea. Not a few are able to run freely on
the surface of the water and even to dive occasionally
for the purpose of seizing one of its denizens, but the
number of those which have succeeded in really
adapting themselves to aquatic life is very limited,
and is, as far as we know, restricted to two small
groups, both of them members of the Agelenidae.

Among the coral reefs of the Indian and Pacific
oceans, and also off the southern coast of Africa there
are found spiders of the genus Desis which spend
almost all their time under the surface of the sea,
from which they only emerge at low tide. They
construct very closely woven tents, impermeable to
sea-water, which imprison air at low tide, generally
choosing for the purpose some cavity which has been
excavated by one of the burrowing molluscs. Beyond
this we really know very little about them, and there
is much difference of opinion as to the mode in which
they obtain their food. Some writers state that they
only leave their shelters at low tide to chase small
crustaceans, and that when placed in vessels containing

vn] WATER-SPIDERS 49

sea water they are quite helpless and soon drown. On
the other hand one observer found that a species of
Desis was quite at home in a sea- water tank, in which
it swam freely and even attacked and fed upon a small
fish. Possibly different species of the genus behave
in different ways, some being more truly aquatic than
others, though it is certain that the troubled waters
of a coral sea are not a very promising field for sub-
aqueous operations. We know a great deal more of
the mode of life of those Agelenids which have taken
to living in fresh water. Indeed the subject of the
water-spider, Argyroneta aquatica, is so hackneyed
that in dealing with it we shall probably be telling
the reader much of what he knows already, but that
possibility must be risked.

There is, then, in many of our lakes, ponds and
slow-flowing rivers with a weedy bed, a spider which
has entirely taken to a water life, and for which it is
useless to search on land. It is a docile captive, and
consequently a favourite subject for transference to
an aquarium, where its habits can be observed at
leisure. Its first care is to construct beneath the
water a small dome-shaped web, open below, and it
generally selects the under surface of the leaf of
a water weed for the purpose of anchorage, though a
ready-made shelter is often furnished by the empty
shell of some fresh-water mollusc. Its next proceeding-
is to fill this retreat with air in a very ingenious manner.

w. s. 4

50 SPIDERS [CH.

While swimming about in the water the spider
has a most striking appearance, its abdomen almost
resembling a globe of quicksilver. This is because
the body is enveloped in a bubble of air, retained
largely by the long hairs with which it is clothed.
Thus it carries its atmosphere about with it, and as
often as not it swims with its back downwards, which
has the effect of bringing the bulk of the air-bubble
towards its ventral surface, where the breathing pores
are situated. Xow when the dome-shaped web is
ready to be filled with air the spider rises to the
surface, lifts its abdomen above it, and brings it down
with a flop, thus imprisoning an extra large air-bubble
which it embraces with its hind-legs by way of holding
it more securely, and then, swimming rapidly down
by means of its other legs to the web it discharges its
load of air beneath the downwardly directed mouth
of the dome.

By a frequent repetition of this process the dome is
at length filled and converted into a veritable diving-
bell, in which the spider can exist quite comfortably
until the supply of oxygen in the imprisoned air is
exhausted and has to be renewed. From this base
it issues forth to feed upon fresh-water insects
and crustaceans, sometimes even attacking small
fishes.

The proceedings of the male Argyroneta in the
mating season are very curious. He seeks out the

vn] WATER-SPIDERS 51

tent of a female and sets up his own establishment-
generally somewhat smaller — close at hand, filling it
with air in the approved manner. He then builds a
sort of corridor uniting the two domes, and when this
is complete he bites through the female dome, thus
uniting the two air reservoirs by means of a connect-
ing tube. Not seldom it happens that the female is
in no mood for dalliance, and a battle royal ensues,
with disastrous results to both domiciles and the tube
that connects them. The male, however, is in this
case well able to hold his own, for he is larger than
the female, a phenomenon elsewhere unknown in the
spider realm. Argyroneta lives for some years, and
makes two diving-bells each year — one near the
surface in summer and one at a greater depth in
winter. It was thought at first that one was con-
structed especially for receiving the eggs and the
other as a habitation, but the egg-cocoon may be
found in either, for there are two broods in the course
of the year. The winter dome is of very dense silk,
glossy in appearance, and giving the effect of a uniform
sheet of silky material rather than a fabric. More-
over its mouth is closed, and the spider remains
inactive within. It is this winter domicile that is
most frequently found in the shells of molluscs. The
egg-cocoon is also dome-shaped, having a convex
upper and a flat under surface. The newly hatched
young inhabit their mother's tent for a time and then

4—2

52 SPIDERS [CH.

set forth in the water to seek their living and set up
establishments on their own account.

There is only one known species of Argyroneta,
widely distributed in the temperate regions of
Europe and Asia. The female is about half-an-inch
long, of no particular beauty out of the water, its
colour being reddish-brown, and its body and legs
very hairy. There are, however, a few New Zealand
spiders rather closely allied to it and of very similar
habits.

CHAPTER VIII

CRAB-SPIDERS. MIMICRY

ALL spiders can spin, but by no means all use
that power to entrap their prey. Many have no
settled abode or resting place except perhaps for a
short time when they are rearing their young. Among
these roving tribes, there are three groups which may
engage our attention for a time — the Crab-spiders
(Thomisidae), the Wolf-spiders (Lycosidae) and the
Jumping spiders (Attidae).

Crab-spiders are seldom seen by the ordinary
observer, for their habits do not bring them pro-
minently into notice, and many of them are of
small size. They are well named, for there is some-
thing exceedingly crab-like in their appearance and

VIII]

CRAB-SPIDERS. MIMICRY

53

in their actions. Their body is generally broad and
flattened, and their legs, instead of being arranged
fore and aft, like those of most spiders, extend more
or less laterally, and though they can move pretty
actively in any direction their normal method of
progression is sideways. Then again, when frightened
they cramp their legs up under their bodies in a most
crab-like fashion and "sham dead."

-_,

Fig. 6. A Crab-spider (Thomisidae), x 3.

We saw some of these spiders on the iron railing,
but their real haunts are among grass and herbage or
upon the trunks of trees. Some are true rovers,
hunting their prey by day and camping out wherever
they happen to find themselves at night. Their
methods are without guile — except that they approach
their victims warily; their trust is in rapidity of

54 SPIDERS [CH.

action and superior strength. But other crab-spiders
lead a less strenuous life; their habit is to lurk in
moss, lichen, or flowers till an insect draws near enough
to be seized without any great expenditure of energy.
Now in the case of some of these spiders the
chance of obtaining a meal is very greatly increased
by a remarkable similarity of coloration between the
spider and its usual hunting ground. The spider's
object is to remain invisible, and concealment is
obviously more easy if its colour matches that of its
environment. To a greater or less extent this
protective coloration as it is called prevails uni-
versally:— spiders are seldom conspicuous objects
among their usual surroundings, but it is only
occasionally that we meet with cases of very
remarkable colour adaptation. Two such, however,
occur among English crab-spiders. One is a species
not uncommon in the south of England, and fairly
plentiful in the Xew Forest, where it is to be sought
among the lichen on the tree trunks, where its blue-
grey body, marked with black and white blotches
makes it practically invisible except when in motion.
It rejoices in the name of Philodromm margaritatus.
The other case is that of the spider known as
Misumena vatia, which is variable in colour, some
specimens being yellow and others pink, while a
variety of the species has a blood-red streak
decorating the front part of its abdomen. If it were

vni] CRAB-SPIDERS. MIMICRY 55

to choose lichen as a hunting ground there would be
little chance of concealment, but it does nothing
so foolish : — it hides among the petals of flowers,
generally, but not always, among flowers more or less
of its own colour.

Now this phenomenon of resemblance is sometimes
carried very much farther than a tolerable corre-
spondence between the colour of an animal and its
surroundings ; it occasionally amounts to an apparent
imitation, in form and in behaviour as well as in
colour, of some other object, either animal or vegetable
and in such cases we have examples of what is known
as Mimicry. Most people have seen remarkable
instances of this phenomenon in the "stick" and "leaf"
insects of entomological collections. There are
several different ways in which such a resemblance
may be profitable to the imitator. Clearly it may be
advantageous for a weak animal to be mistaken for
one much more formidable and less likely to be
attacked, or for an insect which is really extremely
good eating to resemble closely one which birds well
know to be unpalatable. Or again, if your line is to
lie perdu and wait for some unwary insect to come
within reach, it must be a distinct asset to be indis-
tinguishable from such an innocent object as a twig or
a leaf; and the same disguise may serve you if you
are the possible victim and you can make the would-
be devourer believe that you are a mere vegetable.

56 SPIDERS [CH.

It is seldom difficult to see some such possibility
of gain in the numerous well-known cases of insect
mimicry. The wasp tribe — formidable with their
stings — are often "mimicked"; the unpalatable
Heliconid butterflies are "imitated ' by members of
edible families, and some insects are such exact
imitations of leaves that the all-devouring army ants
have been seen to run over them without discovering
the imposition.

"Mimicry' is an unfortunate term inasmuch as
it seems to imply intentional imitation ; "protective
resemblance' is better. It is generally accounted
for by the action of "natural selection " upon random
variations. No two members of a brood are exactly
alike ; slight variations in form, size, colour etc., are
constantly occurring, and when the variation is a
useful one the animal possessing it has a slightly
better chance of surviving and rearing progeny, some
of whom will probably possess the same peculiarity,
perhaps even in a more marked degree, and will be
better equipped than their neighbours in the struggle
for life. The happy possessors of such favourable
variations are thus in a sense "selected' by nature,
and this selection, acting through countless genera-
tions, is thought to be the chief agent in bringing
about the remarkable phenomenon of protective
resemblance.

The theory has, no doubt, been pushed too far;

vni] CRAB-SPIDERS. MIMICRY 57

fanciful resemblances have been detected and
advantages of which there is no proof are some-
times asserted, and moreover other possible ways
of accounting for the facts have been too much
overlooked.

But however it has come about, there is a case of
"mimicry" among crab-spiders which deserves more
than a passing mention. The name of the spider in
question is Phrynarachne dedpiens, and it was
accidently discovered by Forbes when butterfly-
hunting in Java. It spins a white patch of silk on
the upper side of a leaf on which it places itself back-
downwards, clinging to the web by means of spines
on its legs. It then folds its legs closely and lies
absolutely still. In this position the spider and web
look precisely like the dropping of some bird upon
the leaf; such droppings are frequently seen, and
seem to be particularly attractive to butterflies. It
was not until Forbes tried to catch a butterfly settled
on a leaf that he found that what looked like excre-
ment was really a spider which held the butterfly in
its grasp. Even after this experience he was again
deceived by the same species in Sumatra.

There are several extremely ant-like spiders, and
it is remarkable that some of the imitators belong to
widely different spider families: — that is to say the
resemblance has arisen independently from quite
different starting points.

58 SPIDERS [OH.

It is very noteworthy that resemblance in structure
is always accompanied by similarity of behaviour-
as indeed it is bound to be if any benefit is to accrue
to the mimic. Your resemblance to a leaf will
deceive no one if you run wildly about, and your
imitation of an ant will lack verisimilitude if you
adopt a slow and stately method of progression.
Ant-like spiders adopt the hurried and apparently
undecided gait of their models, and insects which
look like sticks, leaves, or inanimate objects all
possess the power — and the habit — of remaining for a
long time perfectly motionless.

CHAPTER IX

WOLF- SPIDERS

OF the groups of wandering spiders, which spin
no snare but trust to speed and agility for their food,
the Lycosidae or wolf-spiders supply the best subjects
for study. To begin with, they are very numerous at
certain times of the year, some species absolutely
swarming in woods during May and June among the
leaves which fell in the previous autumn. During
the summer months they are still in evidence, but as
winter approaches they rapidly disappear. The swift
motion and predaceous habits have earned them the

ix] WOLF-SPIDERS 59

name of wolf-spiders, but though they sometimes
occur in incredible numbers so that it seems im-
possible to avoid treading upon them, they do not
hunt in packs ; each one is entirely concerned with
his own individual quarry. They are moderate-sized
or large spiders — commonly about half an inch long
in this country though there are exotic species which
attain an inch and a quarter — and in build they are
very unlike the garden-spider, being elongate, and
with the abdomen nothing like so globular.

Their habits vary considerably. One genus,
appropriately named Pirata, is semi-aquatic, living
at the margins of rivers and ponds, and able to run
on the surface of the water, but most of the Lycosidae
prefer dry land — the dryer the better. Heaths,
sandhills, bare and stony stretches of soil, even
deserts, are fertile in examples of this group. Most
of the smaller species love the sunlight, and it is
often noticeable on a bright day, when the ground
seems to be alive with wolf-spiders, that a chance
cloud obscuring the sun will cause them to disappear
as if by magic.

Some of the small Lycosids seem to be absolute
wanderers, having no home at all, but spending the
night under a stone or any casual shelter, while
others dig a more or less temporary hole in the
ground into which they carry their captured prey,
and in which they take refuge on the appearance of

60 SPIDERS [CH.

an enemy. The large wolf-spiders have permanent
burrows from which they do not wander far and in
the mouths of which they spend most of their time,
on the look out for passing insects.

Let us first catch one of the small wolf-spiders
and examine it. This is not a very simple operation
with creatures which can run so swiftly, but after a
few attempts we induce a specimen to run up into a
glass tube held in the line of its course. We see it
to be a long-bodied spider thickly beset with hairs
which entirely hide the integument of the abdomen.
Its general hue will probably be a dark grey, and its
abdomen will be decorated by a more or less distinct
pattern due, not as in the garden spider to pigments
in the skin, but to the coloration of the hairs. But
look particularly at its eyes. A pocket-lens will
suffice to reveal that two of them are much larger
and much more business-like in appearance than
anything Epeira had to show. These are directed
forwards, being placed at the upper angles of the
perpendicular front face, so to speak, of the animal.
Below them, just above the jaws, are four small eyes
in a transverse row, and behind them at some
distance, on the upper surface of the cephalothorax,
are yet another pair of moderate size. In some
groups of spiders the eyes are not only small but
have an indefinite, dull, ineffectual appearance ; here
they are clear-cut, glossy and convex ; sight

ix] WOLF-SPIDERS 61

apparently counts for something in the case of the
Lycosidae. And this is what we should expect. A
sedentary spider is informed of the whereabouts of
its prey by the sense of touch, through the trembling
of the web, but a wolf-spider spins no web and is
dependent on the keenness of its vision.

There is a very prettily marked English Lycosid
which is often found on sandhills, in situations
particularly convenient for observation. Its name is
Lycosa jncta, and it is incidentally interesting as
affording a good example of protective coloration,
for the sandhill variety is light-coloured and very
inconspicuous when stationary on the sand, while an
inland variety not uncommon on the dark soil of
heaths is of a much darker hue. Carefully scrutinising
the firmer sand of the dunes on a sunny June day,
I detect a number of small holes — the burrows of a
colony of these spiders — and approaching cautiously
I establish myself at full length at a distance of a
yard or so on the side away from the sun, in such an
attitude that I can observe closely for a considerable
time without too much discomfort. The minutes pass
and nothing happens, but I know that the cardinal
virtue of the naturalist is patience, and I wait.
Presently the dark circle of one of the burrows is
obliterated — it is filled by the sand-coloured head of
the spider, coming up to prospect. Other heads
appear, and soon one spider, bolder than the rest,

62 SPIDERS [CH.

emerges bodily, and remains for a minute motionless,
on the qui vive. Finding no cause for alarm, it
presently begins moving about stealthily, and before
long several members of the colony are busily
exploring the neighbourhood. A cloud passes over
the sun and all quickly disappear into their holes,
but this time without alarm, for they come forth
unhesitatingly when the sun shines again.

It is a fascinating sight to observe these little
creatures pursuing their operations in absolute silence
under my very eyes. A few stealthy steps are taken,
the body being so moved that the battery of eyes is
brought to bear upon different points of the compass ;
a short quick run ensues, followed by more cautious
movements. I am not fortunate enough to see the
actual running down of a quarry, but in time I note
one of the colony bringing home an insect in its jaws.
So absorbed am I that I fairly jump when a horrified
human voice close at hand observes " He's in a fit " !
I have excited the solicitude of a girls' school which
has approached noiselessly over the sand on their
afternoon promenade, and stands gazing at me with
as much fascination as I at the spiders. I hasten to
reassure them, but the spell is broken, and the seance
is at an end. Not a spider is visible.

But I can still do one thing. Here is a good
opportunity of finding out something about the
burrows of these spiders. In turf the investigation

ix] WOLF-SPIDERS 63

would be difficult, but it is easy to operate in the toler-
ably firm sand where the colony has established itself.

I insert a straw into one of the burrows as a guide
to the exploration, and with a knife carefully begin
to remove the sand immediately round it. It is lined,
I find, by a very delicate and slight coating of silk,
no more than sufficient to keep the sand particles of
its walls from falling down into the tube. I go doAvn
for an inch and a half or so and find that the tube
ends blindly in a sort of silk-lined pocket, but no
spider is there ! This is mysterious, for I am pretty
sure that my spiders are at home.

I go to work upon another burrow, but this time
in a different way, digging it out bodily with its
surrounding sand, and placing it on a sheet of paper,
with which I am luckily provided, for a detailed
examination. I can now approach it from the side,
and by carefully removing the sand, lay bare the
whole silken tube. As before there is a straight
perpendicular burrow, ending blindly, and unin-
habited, but at a point at about half-way down the
tube I find a branch bending upward, so that the
whole tunnel is Y shaped, and at the blind end of this
branch I find the spider.

This observation suggests that the tunnels of some
of our English wolf-spiders may be more complex
than was imagined. At present nothing is known of
their nature in the case of other species.

64

SPIDERS

[CH.

A little later in the summer the appearance of
a troop of wolf-spiders has undergone a marked
change ; almost every individual will be found
burdened with a circular bag of eggs attached firmly
to its spinnerets, and carried about with it in all its
wanderings.

Fig. 7. Wolf-spiders ; A, with egg-cocoons ; B, with young on its back.

The "cocoon' is worth examination. It is a
rather flattened sphere, with an equatorial line round
it, giving the effect of two valves — an upper and a
lower. The operation of making it has very seldom
been observed, because it takes place in a closed
retreat constructed for the purpose. McCook was
fortunate enough to see something of it in the case

ix] WOLF-SPIDERS 65

of a captive Lt/cosa which he kept in a glass jar partly
filled with soil. Luckily the spider dug its tunnel for
cocooning purposes up against the side of the jar, so
that its interior was visible. It was about an inch deep
and fairly wide, and its aperture was closed with silk.

Against the perpendicular wall of soil a circular
silken cushion about three quarters of an inch in
diameter was spun, and the eggs deposited in the
centre. The edges of the cushion were then gathered
up and pulled over the eggs, and the bag thus formed
was finished off with an external layer of spinning
work on the two halves of the sphere, the seam or
" equator " being left thin for the exit of the young
spiders. The Lycosa then attached the cocoon to its
spinnerets and proceeded to bite away the silken
sheet which sealed the burrow. The whole operation
lasted about four and a half hours.

Thenceforward, till the young are hatched, the
wolf-spider never quits her egg-bag, which she carries
about on all her expeditions attached by threads to
the spinnerets. Garden-spiders die soon after laying
their eggs and never see their progeny, but here we
have a case of maternal solicitude persisting for many
days, and the Peckhams seized upon it as a good
subject for investigating the subject of the memory
of spiders. If the cocoon were removed from the
spinnerets, after how long an interval would it be
recognised by the mother ?

w. s. 5

66 SPIDERS [CH.

A Pirata was selected for experiment. It offered
great resistance to the removal of the cocoon, seizing
it with its jaws and trying to escape with it. When
it had been taken away the mother displayed great
uneasiness, searching for it in all directions. It was
returned to her after an hour and a half, when she
received it eagerly and immediately attached it in
the usual position.

From three others of the same species the cocoons
were removed and restored after thirteen, fourteen
and a half, and sixteen hours respectively. All
remembered them and took them back immediately.
But twenty-four hours seemed to be the extreme
limit of their memory ; after that interval two of the
mothers refused to have anything to do with their
cocoons, while the third only resumed hers, slowly
and without any enthusiasm, after it had been placed
before her seven times in succession. Some other
species seemed to possess a rather longer memory,
but the experimenters found no Lycosid constant
in her affection for so long a period as forty-eight
hours.

We have said that Lycosid spiders see com-
paratively well ; yet, if they are placed within an
inch or two of their cocoons they may be quite a
long time finding them. This is very puzzling until
it is considered that its habitual position is such that
the spider never sees it. She never has seen it since

ix] WOLF-SPIDERS 67

its construction, and does not in the least recognise
it by sight. Spiders of other groups, where the
female remains near but detached from the cocoon,
are not at the same disadvantage, and if the cocoon
is removed to a short distance the mother will go
straight to it and bring it back. The wolf-spider
only knows the feel of the cocoon ; she may pass
close by it without recognition, but as soon as she
touches it the cocoon is immediately resumed— if the
interval of separation has not been too great.

But is it necessary to restore to the spider her
own cocoon ? Will not that of another spider serve
as well ? Certainly it will ; a wolf-spider will eagerly
adopt the cocoon of a spider even belonging to a
different genus, if not greatly unlike her own in size.
Nay, even a ball of pith of the same size will be
attached with alacrity to the spinnerets, though if
offered a choice between a cocoon and a pith ball
the spider, after some hesitation, selects the real
article. One spider even accepted a cocoon into
which a leaden shot had been inserted, making it
many times its original weight. She could hardly
crawl with her new burden, but stuck to it gallantly,
and when several efforts to secure it to her spinnerets
had proved ineffectual she carried it about between
her jaws and the third pair of legs. Again we find
the intelligence of the spider distinctly limited, but
its powerful instincts are equal to all ordinary

5—2

68 SPIDERS [CH.

requirements. Nature does not, as a rule, play
extravagant pranks, such as interchanging cocoons
or substituting for them pith balls and leaden pellets.
The famous Tarantula is a wolf-spider, though
in America, unfortunately, the name has been quite
wrongly applied to the members of an entirely
different group. Everyone has heard of its deadly
repute, and of the myth that its bite can only be
cured by the wild tarantula dance or tarantella. It
is one of the large Lycosids of southern Europe.
These, as we have said, are much less nomadic than
the smaller species, but have a permanent home,
from which they do not wander far afield. They
prefer waste, arid places, and their burrows are
simple cylindrical tubes with the upper portion lined
by silk, the mouth being often surmounted by a sort
of rampart of particles of soil mingled with small
pieces of wood collected in the neighbourhood. The
spider lurks in the mouth of the tube Avhere its
glistening eyes can be distinctly seen. If an insect
ventures near it rushes out and secures it ; if alarmed,
it retreats instantlv to the bottom of the burrow.

V

That most fascinating of all entomological writers,
J. H. Fabre, made some observations on a tarantula
of southern France which well deserve attention.
Colonies of the spider were numerous in his neigh-
bourhood, and he set himself to procure some
specimens. Old writers assert that if a straw be

ix] WOLF-SPIDERS 69

inserted into the burrow the spider will seize it and
hold it so firmly that it may be drawn forth. Fabre
found this method exciting, but uncertain in its
results. Another plan which had been advocated
was to approach warily and cut off the retreat of
a spider by plunging the blade of a knife into the
soil below it and so cutting off its retreat, but this
required very rapid action, and was, moreover, apt
to be prevented by the presence of stones in the soil.
He devised a new scheme. He provided himself with
a number of " bumble " bees in narrow glass tubes —
about the width of the spider burrows. Repairing to
a tarantula colony he would present the open end of
the tube to the mouth of a burrow. The liberated
bee, seeing a hole in the ground exactly suitable for
its own purposes, would enter it with very little
hesitation. There would be a loud buzz and then
instant silence. Inserting a pair of forceps into the
hole, Fabre would then withdraw the bee with the
spider clinging tenaciously to it. In all cases the
death of the bee was instantaneous, though the
closest examination of its dead body revealed no
wound.

Xow Fabre was fresh from his wonderful studies of
the habits of the solitary wasps, which provide their
young with insects stung in such a way as to cause
paralysis but not death. In their case the problem
was to secure food for their larvae which should

70 SPIDERS [OH.

remain fresh for many days, an instinct taught them
to solve it in the most remarkable manner. The
problem of the spider was different. It was a case of
killing instantly, or being killed ; a merely wounded
bee is as formidable as one unharmed. What Fabre
desired to know was this : did the spider trust to one
invariable deadly stroke in dealing with the bee,
as the solitary wasp, according to its species, had
been found to act always precisely in the same way in
paralysing its victim ?

To settle this point the spider must be seen at
work, and the obvious plan seemed to be to enclose
a bee and a tarantula in a glass vessel and see what
would happen. But nothing happened at all. The
spider, away from its burrow, refused to attack. The
equally matched antagonists treated each other with
the greatest respect and only evinced a desire to keep
as far apart as possible. Even when placed in the
same tube both acted on the defensive, and no light
was thrown on the problem.

But Fabre's ingenuity was equal to the occasion.
It occurred to him that to use as a bait an insect of
burrowing habits had been a tactical error ; if instead
of a bumble bee some other insect, equally formidable,
but not attracted by holes in the ground, were
selected for the purpose, the spider might be induced
to rush forth and reveal its method of attack.

A large carpenter bee — Xylocopa — was chosen

ix] WOLF-SPIDERS 71

and the mouth of the tube containing it was presented
as before to the mouth of the tarantula tunnel. The
insect showed no disposition to enter the tunnel, but
buzzed in the tube outside. Many burrows were
tested before any luck attended the investigator, but
at length a spider responded. There was a fierce
rush, a clinch, and the bee was dead ; the operation
was too rapid to follow, but the spider's fangs remained
where they had struck — embedded just behind the
insect's neck. The experiment was repeated until
sufficient cases had been witnessed to establish the
fact that the tarantula dealt no random stroke but
with unerring precision and lightning rapidity plunged
its fangs into the vital spot. Fabre quaintly exclaims
"J'etais ravi de ce savoir assassin; j'etais dedommage
de mon epiderme roti au soleil ! '

Examples of the same species of tarantula kept
in captivity threw further light of the habits of the
group. These large Lycosids live for years, and
though stay-at-homes when range so-to-speak, they
are at first wanderers on the face of the earth. They
do not settle down and burrow till the autumn just
after they have attained maturity. These young
adults are only about half the size they will eventually
attain, but the burrows are enlarged at need, so that
it is customary to find tubes of two sizes — those of
the newly established small females, and those of the
fully-grown females of two or more years old.

72 SPIDERS [CH.

Curiously enough, if disturbed, they entirely
decline to burrow unless it be the proper season for
that operation, but remain inert and helpless on the
surface till they die. If, however, a tunnel is pro-
vided for them, they enter it at once and adapt it to
their needs.

The legs take no part in the burrowing process,
which is entirely carried out by the jaws. With
infinite labour small particles of earth are dislodged
and carried by the mandibles to be dropped at
a considerable distance from the nest.

The parapet round the mouth of the tube is in
nature usually quite a small erection, but this seems
to be due to the fact that only a small amount of
suitable material is available in the immediate neigh-
bourhood, and the spiders will not go far afield. In
captivity, when abundance of material was supplied,
they attained a height of two inches. Small stones,
sticks, and strands of wool cut into lengths of one
inch and of various colours were placed within reach,
and all were used in building the parapet. Com-
paratively huge pebbles were rolled up for a founda-
tion, and fragments of earth and pieces of wool
entirely irrespective of colour were bound together
by irregular spinning work.

On sunny days the spiders would crouch behind
the parapet with their eyes above its level. To
distant insects they paid no attention, but if one

ix] WOLF-SPIDERS 73

approached within leaping distance, it was pounced
upon with unfailing accuracy.

In due season the captives laid their eggs and
enclosed them in the regulation cocoon which they
attached to their spinnerets, never parting from them
thenceforward, though considerably hampered by
them in their movements up and down the tube.
But a very remarkable change now took place in
their behaviour at the mouth of the tunnel. In
sunny weather, instead of remaining, as Fabre puts
it, " accoudtf' on the parapet, they reversed their
position, raised their egg-cocoons with their hind legs,
and slowly and deliberately turned them about, so
that every part in succession should be exposed to
the sun's rays.

We now come to a remarkable habit possessed by
all the Lycosidae. When the young are ready
to leave the cocoon they find an exit at the thinner
equatorial seam, and proceed immediately to climb
on to the back of the mother, clinging firmly to her
covering of hairs. If a wanderer, she carries them
thus on all her expeditions ; if a stay-at-home, they
accompany her up and down her tube. They are
often dislodged — indeed, when alarmed, they scatter
for the moment, but when the peril has passed they
immediately swarm up the maternal legs to their
former position.

Now in the case of the tarantula, it is seven

74 SPIDERS [CH.

months before they are able to fend for themselves.
Meanwhile they eat nothing, and look on with in-
difference while their mother feeds. She not only
carries them willingly, but exhibits solicitude when
deprived of them, but she shows no discrimination as
to her own offspring, and is quite content with those
of another spider. The young, when brushed off,
climb the legs of the nearest female, and a spider
may thus be laden with thrice her proper load with-
out any protest. They form a layer two or three
deep, and can then only find room by covering the
whole of her back. They nevertheless take care not
to obscure her vision by covering her eyes.

Two mother tarantulas, each with her young on
her back, came into contact, and a battle a outrance
took place. One wras slain, but the double brood,
scattered by the conflict, on its cessation climbed on
to the back of the victor, and remained calmly in
position while she proceeded to dine in leisurely
fashion on the vanquished !

In March, seven months after hatching, the young
were ready to start life for themselves. Their first
action was to climb to the highest points attainable,
whence they set sail in the manner already described,
and were borne gently away in the air.

We can hardly leave the tarantula without saying
something on the vexed question of spider venom.
All over the world there are certain particular spiders

ix] WOLF-SPIDERS 75

whose bite is especially feared. Among them are the
"Tarantula" and the "Malmignate" of southern
Europe, the "Yancoho" of Madagascar, the " Katipo "
of New Zealand, and the " Queue rouge " of the
West Indies. Quite an extensive literature has arisen
around the subject but its perusal leaves one not
much wiser than one was before. Circumstantial
accounts of deaths from the bite of a spider are
countered by the assertions of experimenters that
they have allowed themselves to be bitten repeatedly
by the same species without suffering any incon-
venience. There is at all events some basis for the
popular view in the fact that all spiders possess
a poison gland which is analogous to that of the
snake inasmuch as it opens near the tip of the fang
which is plunged into the animal attacked. In the
case of the large, powerful spiders of the family
Mygalidae, and perhaps in the tarantulas the effects
of the bite on higher animals are not negligible, and
clearly exceed the results of a mere puncture. A
young sparrow and a mole bitten by Fabre's taran-
tula in spots by no means vital died within a few
hours. But it is a very remarkable fact that many
of the most dreaded spiders are neither large nor
powerful. The "Malmignate," the "Vancoho," the
"Katipo," and the "Queue rouge' are all members
of the comparatively weak-jawed Theridiidae, and
their only striking characteristic is vivid coloration,

76 SPIDERS [CH.

all being marked with red spots. It is probable that
their deadly powers are almost entirely fabulous ;
and that they have been singled out as particularly
da gerous merely because of their conspicious ap-
pearance.

The smaller species are certainly harmless as far
as man is concerned, and it is even disputed whether
their poison plays much part in the ordinary slaying
of insects. The very inconsistent results of experi-
ments may be due to some control exercised by the
spider over the output of poison. There is no proof
that its ejection is automatic, and it is quite possible
that the spider is economical in its use. Or again, in
some of the cases of innocuous biting, the supply of
venom may have run short.

CHAPTER X

JUMPING SPIDERS

WE are not in the land of the jumping spiders or
Attidae, and our few and sober-coloured examples of
the group give but a feeble idea of the Attid fauna
of tropical countries where these creatures abound
and often rival the "ruby-tail" flies in the brilliancy
of their hues.

It is one of the largest groups, numbering several

x]

JUMPING SPIDERS

77

thousand species, but the British list includes barely
thirty, and most of these are of rare occurrence, or at
all events exceedingly unlikely to be met with by any
but the most energetic collector. Indeed it inay^e
said that there is only one British species which we
may look forward with tolerable confidence to finding
upon some sunny wall or fence in the summer, in
whatever part of the country we may be. This is

Fig. 8. SaJtii'-iis scenicns, female, x 4.

Salticus scenicus, sometimes called the Zebra Spider.
Though absolutely dowdy in comparison with most of
its tropical cousins, it is a not unattractive little
creature, and illustrates sufficiently well the charac-
teristics of its tribe. Armed with a pocket-lens,
a glass tube or two, and — more necessary still — the
very largest amount of patience we can summon, we
go in quest of the zebra spider. A tarred fence is
a good hunting ground, because the spider, if present,

78 SPIDERS [CH.

is readily seen, but if this is drawn blank we must
have recourse to a wall, where sharper eyesight will
be required.

Our quarry is of small size, not more than a
quarter of an inch long in the body, which resembles
that of the wolf-spiders in build, the abdomen not
rising above the level of the fore-body or cephalo-
thorax. It is thickly clothed with short hairs — black,
white, and grey — so arranged as to show oblique zebra-

Fig. 9. "Face" of an Attid spider, shewing the anterior
eyes and the chelicerae.

like stripes on either side of the abdomen. The legs
are short and robust, very different from the long
thin limbs of the garden-spider ; especially strong
are the fore-legs. The head is broad and square,
with a high perpendicular forehead, but the most
remarkable features are the eyes.

On the vertical front are four splendid eyes. The
wolf-spider's eyes were large, but these, in comparison
are immense, especially the median pair. Their axes
are directed straight in front. Four other eyes are

x] JUMPING SPIDERS 79

placed on the top of the head, far apart from each
other, the more forward pair very small, the hind pair
of moderate size. In some Attid spiders these great
anterior eyes are wonderful objects under the micro-
scope, deep sea-green in hue and fringed with coloured
hairs. They form a veritable battery which the spider
brings to bear upon the object of its chase. Human
eyes, to match them in comparative size, would literally
have to be as large as saucers !

If we are in luck, we soon descry a Salticus
showing up boldly against the black surface of the
fence, and to set ourselves to watch its antics attent-
ively. One thing strikes us at once ; it is quite at
home on a perpendicular surface — nay, on the under
side of a horizontal beam, for that matter. Now
a garden spider would have great difficulty in main-
taining itself in such a position unless well supplied
with silken lines to which to cling ; evidently there
is some difference in the structure of the feet of these
spiders which may be worth investigating later on.

Also we notice some odd tricks of movement in
the jumping spider ; a curious way of exploring the
surface on which it is working by a succession of
short runs alternately with periods of absolute stillness
as though on the qui vive ; a noticeable freedom of
movement between the fore- and the hind- bodies so
that its battery of eyes may be directed to this
side or that ; sometimes an elevation of fore part

80 SPIDERS [CH.

as though for the purpose of obtaining a wider
view.

We may have to wait long before we see it
successful in the chase. It will often patiently
explore a large area, testing the surface with its palps
as it goes, without any obvious reward. It con-
scientiously searches all depressions and crannies,
and, sometimes remains in them for a considerable
time — perhaps to devour some minute creature
which did not call into play its special methods of
attack. At last it sights a small insect which has
alighted on the fence a few inches away ; we see
it turn its head in that direction and remain motion-
less. Soon it begins to edge nearer in a stealthy
manner, striving to approach its prey from behind,
till, with a sudden spring, it pounces on its back.
Not always is the spring successful ; often the insect
sees its peril at the last moment and takes to wing.
But in this case, how does the spider avoid a fall ?
We see, what we had not noticed before, that it is
anchored to the fence by a silken line ; indeed all
the time it has been hunting it has been trailing
behind it an exceedingly fine thread of silk which
it has attached at frequent intervals to the fence, so
that it can check its fall at will in the case of accident.
At the right angle, we may see the delicate filaments
glistening in the sun over the surface of its explora-
tions. The garden-spider entangles its prey in a web,

x] JUMPING SPIDERS 81

the wolf-spider runs it down by sheer strength and
speed, but the jumping spider stalks it like a Red
Indian.

The actions of the spider make it quite evident
that its power of sight is well developed. Mr and
Mrs Peckham, whose remarkable observations on the
mating habits of jumping spiders must presently be
considered, established friendly relations with some
of their captives which became so tame as to jump
on their hands and take food from their fingers.
They frequently induced them to jump from a finger
of one hand to one of the other, gradually increasing
the distance up to eight inches. They also twice
observed a male chasing a female upon a table
covered with jars, books and boxes. "The female
would leap rapidly from one object to another, or
would dart over the edge of a book or a box so as to
be out of sight. In this position she would remain
quiet for a few moments and then, creeping to the
edge, would peer over to see if the male were still
pursuing her. If he happened not to be hidden, she
would seem to see him, even when ten or twelve
inches away, and would quickly draw back."

Moreover that they have the ability to discriminate
colours has been shown by their behaviour when
imprisoned in cages consisting of a series of com-
municating chambers each with a glass top of a
different hue. They show a marked preference for

w. s. 6

82 SPIDERS [CH.

the red chamber under these circumstances while the
least attractive colour seems to be blue.

It has been known for a long time that the males
of many kinds of birds — and especially of the more
ornamental species — are accustomed to perform the
most extraordinary antics in the presence of the
female at the time of mating. The Peckhams made
the unexpected discovery that precisely similar
" love dances " took place in the case of the jumping
spiders. Even the comparatively sober-coloured
"zebra spider" performs a weird pas seal in courting
its mate, but its display is feeble compared with that
of some of the more ornate of the Attidae.

Certain isolated observations on captive jumping
spiders led these observers to suspect that the
mating habits were unusual and worthy of accurate
investigation, and they laid their plans accordingly,
taking their summer holiday a month earlier than
usual, so as to miss nothing of the pairing season,
and including in their party an artist whose drawings
should furnish an indubitable record of the attitudes
assumed by the male spiders in their evolutions.

On arriving at their destination they found a
small species, Saitis pulex, with no great claims to
remarkable beauty, mature, and ready to pair. A
female was placed in one of the experimental boxes
which had been provided in advance, and a male was
admitted on the following day. He sighted her at

x] JUMPING SPIDERS 83

a distance of twelve inches, and showing signs of
excitement, advanced to within about four inches and
then performed a most ludicrous dance — something
in the nature of a " highland fling," in a semicircle
before her, she, in the meantime, moving in such a
manner as to keep him always in view. His exact
behaviour was this : he extended all the legs — and the
palp — on the left side, folding the first two legs and
the palp of the right side under him, and leaning
over sideways so far as nearly to lose his balance,
and in this attitude he sidled along towards the
lowered (right) side till he had described an arc of
about two inches ; then the position was instantly
reversed, the right legs being extended and the left
folded under, and the arc retraced. A male was
seen to repeat this performance 111 times ! He
then approached nearer and when almost within
reach "whirled madly around and around her, she
joining and whirling with him," after which she
accepted him as a mate.

The next species to engage attention was an Iciits.
It was noteworthy that although the neighbourhood
was well known to the experimenters they had never
met with this spider before, but for a few days it
swarmed on the fences just as birds are known to
assemble from all quarters for the so-called "love
dances." After the mating season the spiders wandered
oif into the woods again and were seen no more.

6—2

84 SPIDERS [CH.

The performance was much as before, but the spiders
assumed different attitudes. The female lay flat on
the ground with her front legs raised ; the male
danced on the six hind legs, with the front legs
lowered and meeting at the tips. The males of
this species were exceedingly quarrelsome, sparring
frantically whenever they met, but their battles were

Fig. 10. A male Attid spider (Astia vittata) dancing before
the female. (After Peckham.)

entirely bloodless. "Indeed," say the observers,
"having watched hundreds of seemingly terrible
battles between the males of this and other species,
the conclusion has been forced upon us that they are
all sham affairs, gotten up for the purpose of
displaying before the females, who commonly stand
by, interested spectators." In the case of one species,

x] JUMPING SPIDERS 85

after two weeks of hard fighting between the males,
the Peckhams were unable to discover one wounded
warrior. The females, on the other hand, were
often really formidable. Phidippus morsitans is an
example. The male has handsome front legs, thickly
fringed with white hairs, and he displays these to
the best advantage in his love antics. Two males
supplied in succession to one female "had offered her
only the merest civilities when she leaped upon them
and killed them."

In the case of most of the spiders whose love-
dances were investigated, the chief ornamentation
of the male consisted of fringes of white or coloured
hairs on the face, the palps, and the front legs, and
they kept these parts always before the females,
displaying their glories to the utmost advantage.
The male of Habrocestum splendens, however, pos-
sesses an extremely brilliant abdomen, and, lest
anything of its beauty should be lost upon the object
of his admiration, he varies the ordinary performance
in a remarkable manner. He often pauses in the
dance, and, raising his abdomen, "strikes an attitude"
in which he remains motionless for half a minute.
Moreover he frequently turns his back on the female
-a most unusual occurrence in the course of these
antics.

The males of one species, Philaeus militaris, were
observed to capture and keep guard over young

86 SPIDERS [CH.

females, which they imprisoned in webs spun for the
purpose until they had undergone their last moult
and were mature, chasing away all intruders in the
interval.

The jumping spiders furnish a much stronger case
for those who believe that ornamentation plays an
important part in sexual selection than do either birds
or butterflies. With regard to the birds it has been
objected, first, that there is little evidence that the
females pay much attention to the antics of the
males, and secondly, that practically all the male
birds pair, whatever their claims to pre-eminent
beauty. Now in the case of the jumping spiders the
females follow the performances of the males with
the utmost attention, and seeing that the males are
present in large numbers when the females begin to
appear, the latter are certainly in the position to
reject such mates as do not please them.

The mere relation of the results of this most
interesting investigation conveys no hint of the
unwearied patience and close observation necessary
to those who would surprise the secrets of nature.
One is apt to infer that it is only needful to place
some spiders in a box, establish oneself in an arm
chair, and ring on the performance, so to speak.
The Peck hams modestly remark : "The courtship of
spiders is a very tedious affair. We shall condense
our descriptions as much as possible, but it must be

xi] THERAPHOSID SPIDERS 87

noted that we often worked four or five hours a day
for a week in getting a fair idea of the habits of a
single species."

CHAPTER XI

THERAPHOSID SPIDERS

IT is quite impossible in a work like the present
to deal with the classification of spiders. About

forty families have been established, some of them of

»/

vast extent, the Attidae, for example, including some
four thousand species. The great French arachno-
logist, M. E. Simon, has occupied 2,000 quarto pages
in defining the families, sub-families and genera,
without concerning himself with the species at all !
It is, however, desirable, that the attention of the
reader should be called to the primary division of
the group, according to which all spiders are either
Araneae verae (true spiders) or Araneae theraphosae
(theraphosid spiders.)

Now these two kinds of spider may readily be
distinguished by a single easily observable charac-
teristic, the nature of the mandibles or chelicerae ;
but it is necessary to describe the spider's mandibles
before the difference can be appreciated.

Their nature is perhaps best explained by saying
that each mandible is not unlike a penknife with

88 SPIDERS [CH.

a single small blade, rather more than half open
when in use, closed when at rest. The handle of the
penknife is certainly in most cases very short and
thick, and the blade not really a blade at all, for
it has no cutting edge, but is a "fang" or piercing
instrument generally somewhat curved, and with
a sharp point. The " blade ' is, moreover, perforated
by a tube which comes from the poison-gland, situated
in the thickened " handle," or in the spider's head, so
that poison can be forced into the wound which it
inflicts.

Now take two penknives with the blades half open
and hold them so that they hang with the hinge
downward and with the blades directed towards each
other ; it is clear that the blades may be made to
pierce an object situated between them by moving
the handles laterally, the object being attacked
simultaneously on either side. This is the arrange-
ment in the true spiders, whose jaws move sideways,
though they do not always hang perpendicularly,
but are more often somewhat slanted forwards.

To represent the jaws of a theraphosid spider the
penknives must be arranged differently. Place the
handles horizontally and parallel to each other, with
the blades directed downwards and also parallel.
They will now work not sideways, but up and down,
and both fangs will pierce the victim from above. In
a word, the true spiders have jaws which can be

xi] THERAPHOSID SPIDERS 89

separated or brought together, and which tend to
meet in the object into which they are plunged, while
the jaws of theraphosid spiders work in parallel
vertical planes, and strike downwards.

All the spiders which have so far concerned us
are Arcuieae verae, and we have incidentally had
occasion to note some of the principal families of that
division — Epeiridae (or Argiopidae as some prefer
to call them), Theridiidae, Agelenidae, Thomisidae,
Lycosidae and Attidae.

Indeed there is only one theraphosid spider that
there is the least likelihood of our coming across in
this country. Their true home is in hotter climes,
and though stragglers from their army are not rare
in the warmer portions of temperate regions, they
abound only in tropical countries. They include the
" Trap-door " spiders, common in the Mediterranean
region and in many other widely distant parts of the
world, and the great "Bird-eating" spiders of the
tropics — the spiders which are quite wrongly but
universally alluded to in America as Tarantulas.

The single British example is well worth the
study of any reader who is fortunate enough to come
across it. But he must first catch his hare, for
Atypm affinis (or piceus as it used to be called)
does not grow in every hedge-row, nor is it easy to
find it where it does occur. Most of the localities
recorded are^in the south of England. It is a thick-set

90 SPIDERS [CH.

dark-coloured spider about half an inch in length,
and with very thick, powerful mandibles, which, as we
have seen, work vertically.

Its nest is a loosely- woven tubular structure, which
partly lines a more or less vertical hole in the ground
and partly lies exposed on the surface, but which does
not present any obvious opening for entrance and
exit.

The situation chosen is generally a sloping sandy
bank covered with vegetation. The burrow is about
eight inches in depth and about three quarters of an
inch in diameter. Near the bottom it narrows and
then expands into a somewhat wider chamber where
the spider lives and constructs its egg-cocoon. The
portion of the tube above the ground is sometimes
longer but more often shorter than the buried portion,
and it tapers to a closed end.

Mr Joshua Brown, who first found this spider near
Hastings in 1856, took home several of the tubes with
the spiders inside. He could find no opening, and
though the spiders moved up and down the tubes
they did not emerge. On tearing a tube open he
found no remains of insects inside, but in one case he
came across a worm, partly within, and partly outside
the lower part of the tube, and apparently partially
devoured by the spider.

The same species is not rare in France and M.
Simon's observations on it closely agreed with those

xi] TIIERAPHOSID SPIDERS 91

of Mr Brown. He believed that the spider chiefly
depended for its food on earthworms which, in the
course of their bin-rowings, came casually into its
neighbourhood. Since these observations, however,
considerable light has been thrown on the habits of
the spider by Enock, who found colonies on Hamp-
stead Heath and near Woking. His investigations
extended over several years, and wonderful patience
was needed before the secrets of this curious animal
were divulged.

It appears that the female, when once established,
never leaves the nest at all ! The aerial portion of the
web was always a puzzle, but now we know, thanks
to Enock, that it constitutes the whole hunting ground
of the spider. Like promises and pie-crust it is
apparently made to be broken. If it is accidentally
brushed against by a passing insect the spider is
instantly aware of the fact, rushes to the spot, and
transfixes the intruder with its powerful mandibles.
It turns on its back to do this, and strikes the insect
from behind, afterwards pulling its prey through the
weft and into the tube by main force. It drags it to
the bottom of the tunnel, makes sure of its death, and
immediately returns and repairs the rent.

Insects were held against the tube, and the spider,
if hungry, accepted them at once ; if replete however,
it always gave a tug at the tube, which retracted
a portion of it into the burrow — a curious action

92 SPIDERS [CH.

which Enock quite learnt to interpret as the " I don't
Avant any more " movement.

The males made nests exactly like the females,
but shallower, and they left them to search for their
mates, leaving the ends open. On finding a female
nest, they " serenaded ' by tapping with their palps,
and after some delay, tore open the web and entered.
By and by the female came up and repaired the rent,
first pulling the edges together with her jaws and
then uniting them with silk from her spinnerets. In
one case nothing more was seen of the male for nine
months, when his empty skin was observed at the
end of the tube. After nine months of connubial
bliss his consort had devoured him !

In the autumn and spring, eggs and newly-hatched
young were often found in the nests. Late in March
a small hole, yg inch in diameter, was noticed at the
end of some of the webs, and presently the young
began to emerge — never to return to the nest. They
immediately climbed the highest objects at hand, and
some were seen to be carried off by the breeze.

Enock found, by an ingenious experiment, that
the sand which is incorporated in the aerial part of
the tube — no doubt to render it inconspicuous — is
obtained from within, and not from outside the nest.
Carefully covering the exposed web, he powdered
the ground all round it with red brick-dust, but the
particles which the spider embedded in the web were

xi] THERAPHOSID SPIDERS 93

of brown sand, evidently obtained from the bottom
of the burrow and not from the surrounding surface.
But in the case of some newly-dispersed young spiders
he was able to see this operation performed. The
first part of the nest to be made was the aerial
portion, at the foot of which the digging was com-
menced. Particles of sand were brought up in the
jaws of the young spider and pushed into the weft
of the tube. Occasionally the jaws were thrust
through the delicate web and particles from without
were seized and pulled into the silken fabric.

It is sad to have to relate that such young spiders
as did not emerge from the web within a reasonable
time were devoured by their unnatural parent. It
sometimes happened that a change of weather ren-
dered it unsuitable for the departure of the young,
and in this case the mother closed up the exit-hole,
and retired to feed upon her offspring ! Thus, though
there were as many as a hundred and forty in a
brood, a good many perished at the outset, and the
ants in the surrounding soil accounted for some of
the rest.

The Atypidae form a small outlying group of the
Theraphosid spiders and are able to live in colder
regions than most of their relatives. The great bulk
of the division belong to the family Aviculariidae.

Some of the Aviculariidae are not unlike Agelena
in their mode of life, spinning a dense sheet-web

94 SPIDERS [CH.

terminating in a tube, and entrapping their prey.
Far the greater number, however, as far as their
habits are known at all, are earth dwellers, either
inhabiting more or less complex burrows of their
own, or sheltering under stones or in chance cavities
by day and emerging at night to seek food in the
immediate neighbourhood of their hiding-places. Some
of them are quite small, but the majority are large
robust spiders, of formidable appearance. The largest
known spider, Theraphosa leblondi, is found in South
America, and its body measures more than three and a
half inches in length. Few spiders have attracted more
attention than the fabricators of the curious " trap-
door ' nests, which are common in the Riviera, and
indeed in all the countries bordering the Mediter-
ranean. But abundant though they are, they are
extremely difficult to find, and it is generally only
by chance that their existence is detected.

The Tarantula occasionally closes the mouth of
her tunnel with a sheet of silk in which are encrusted
the debris of insects or particles of soil. She does
this at the time when she is spinning her cocoon and
any intrusion is particularly inopportune, but she
does it also on other occasions which are not so easily
accounted for. A reason which would naturally occur
to us would be the exclusion of excessive rain or
excessive sunshine, but the facts, unfortunately, do
not accord with this explanation.

xi] THERAPHOSID SPIDERS 95

Now, however desirable occasional closure may
be, a permanent door would hamper the tarantula
in her hunting operations, but the habits of the trap-
door spider are different, and she closes her retreat
with a wonderful hinged lid or "trap-door." And
the commonest form of trap-door is also the most
perfect, being thick and tapering, and fitting ac-
curately into the bevelled f mouth of the tube like
a stopper in the mouth of a bottle. It is made of
alternate layers of spider silk and earth, and is free
for more than half its circumference, the remaining
portion of the surface disc being attached to the side
of the tube by a flexible hinge of silk. Moggridge
dissected the door of a full-sized tunnel into fourteen
graduated discs. The smallest — and of course the
lowest — represented the first door ever made by the
spider, and the successively larger discs indicated
the stages at which its increasing size rendered an
enlargement of the tube — and therefore of the door
-necessary.

The spider always interweaves vegetable matter
from the neighbourhood into each new disc, so that,
as a rule, it is entirely indistinguishable from its
surroundings when closed ; and not only dead
vegetable matter, for if the tube is situated amongst
moss, moss grows upon the lid. From our previous
experience, however, we shall not be surprised to
find that blind instinct and not forethought is

96 SPIDERS [CH.

responsible for this action. Moggridge removed the lid
of a tunnel and also cleared the ground immediately
round it of all vegetation ; nevertheless, when the
spider made a new door, it covered it with moss taken
from the undisturbed vegetation beyond, so that the
trap-door was now conspicuous as a green oasis in a
sandy desert ! And on another occasion a spider
interwove fragments of scarlet fabric left purposely
at hand into the lid of its tunnel. It is clear, there-
fore, that the decoration of the door is due to an
instinct which impels the spider to utilise any
material of the neighbourhood without any regard
to the effect produced.

The tube is densely lined Avith silk, which affords
its architect a • secure foot-hold, and if any enemy
attempts to open the lid from without, the spider
resists with all its strength — which is not incon-
siderable— clinging on to its under surface with its
front legs and jaws, while the claws of its other feet
grasp the silken walls of the tube.

The other type of trap-door is less interesting and
much more elementary, consisting simply of a wafer-
like sheet of silk mixed with earth and vegetable
matter, but it is a curious fact that while all known
trap-door nests of the cork type are simple tubes,
the burrows with wafer doors are often much more
complex. In some cases there is a branch tube, like
that constructed by Lycosa picta, leaving the main

xi] THERAPHOSID SPIDERS 97

tunnel at a depth of some three inches, and reaching
the surface perhaps two inches away from the trap-
door, so that the whole excavation is Y-shaped. This
branch tube is permanently closed by a thin sheet
of silk and earth, which, however, it would not be
difficult to break through if it were urgent for the
spider to escape while the enemy was exploring the
main tunnel.

But a more interesting case is the occurrence of
another trap-door some way down the tube. If the
tube is tmbranched, this forms merely a second
line of defence if the outer door is forced, but in the
case of a branched tube the additional door hangs at
the fork of the Y, and is so shaped as to form a
perfect valve, so that the spider, by holding it against
one or the other side of the tunnel, can connect the
bottom limb of the Y with either fork at will, leaving
to the intruder a beautifully smooth-lined tube to
explore, with no hint of the possibility of escape in
other directions.

There are sometimes other complications in the
ramification of the tube, but these need not detain
us. Each species of spider adheres to its own
particular type of architecture, and may safely — in
a given neighbourhood — be identified by its nest.

As with the Lycosidae, the burrowing is all done
by the mandibles, but here the first joint — the handle
of the penknife — is of more importance than the

w. s. 7

98 SPIDERS [CH.

blade or fang. Indeed the burrowing species of the
Aviculariidae may be distinguished from the rest by
their mandibles, which are provided in front writh a
rastellum, or row of teeth for digging. A trap-door
spider, then, does not go to work like a rabbit, or a
terrier, scratching and kicking away the earth as it
digs ; it laboriously dislodges particles of soil with
its powerful mandibles, and carries away the loosened
fragments to deposit them at a distance.

The trap-door spiders of the Mediterranean region
are nocturnal creatures, and little is known of their
habits. Erber relates that a species found in the
island of Tinos comes out at night, fixes open the
trap-door with a few threads, and spins a web near
its nest to entrap passing insects, clearing away any
trace of it before the dawn. In the case of some
Chinese and also some Australian species observers
allege that they frequently wander from their nests
in the day-time.

A California!! species was able to leave its nest
when the trap-door was weighted with three ounces
of lead. On re-entering, it seized the edge of the
door with its mandibles, and, raising it slightly,
inserted its front legs. It then turned round and
slipped backwards into the tube. It always resisted
the forcible opening of its door to the last moment,
when it let go and slid into the tube "as though
going down a well."

xi] THERAPHOSID SPIDERS 99

The larger Avicnlariidae have acquired a reputa-
tion for feeding on birds, and this has given rise both
to their scientific and their popular name — bird-eating
spiders. Several travellers have stated that they
have observed them with birds in their grasp, and
there is no doubt of their ability to kill any small
bird or mammal, though it is probable that they
seldom have the opportunity, for they spin no snare
in which birds may be caught. Even without the aid
of their poison, their jaws are so large and powerful
that they may easily attain the vital organs of small
animals. Probably their staple food consists of the
larger insects.

They live in holes in the ground or in trees, or
sometimes in the fork of a tree-branch. In such
hiding places they spend the hours of day-light,
emerging at night in search of food. Their large size
and uncanny appearance have attracted the attention
of the collector, and a great many species are known,
but the fact that they chiefly inhabit tropical
countries has militated against any very extended
study of their habits, and the few items of informa-
tion we possess are best related with regard to the
particular spider observed, and not taken as neces-
sarily characteristic of the whole tribe. There is
little doubt that they live for several years. McCook
kept a specimen of Dugesiella hentzi in captivity
for five and a half years, and he considered that

7—2

100 SPIDERS [CH.

when it reached him it was at least a year and a
half old, and probably more. The same species
has recently been made the subject of some very
interesting observations by Petrunkewitch, who
obtained numerous living specimens from Texas and
kept them in captivity ; unless carefully packed, they
bore the railway journey badly, and it was above all
things necessary to supply them with water.

The captives were fed on grass-hoppers, crickets,
cockroaches and wolf-spiders, but they ate sparingly,
one grass-hopper sufficing for three days in the
summer, while in the winter hardly any food at all
was taken.

The sense of touch is extremely well developed
in these spiders, but in sight, hearing and smell they
are strangely deficient. No response whatever, was
obtained to either high or low notes. A cricket sang
for hours quite close to a spider which had been kept
hungry for several days, without attracting any
attention. It is very remarkable, by the way, that
insects show no instinctive dread of these formidable
creatures, not attempting to keep at a distance, and
indeed frequently running over them in trying to
find a way out of the cage. Nor do the spiders seem
to be at all guided by smell ; they evince no know-
ledge of the presence of insects which emit a strong
odour, nor do they react to such tests as those to
which the garden-spider was subjected unless strong

xi] THERAPHOSID SPIDERS 101

irritants such as chlorine are employed, in the
perception of which it is perhaps unnecessary that
smell in the strict sense should take any part.

They have eight eyes — two of them round and
rather business-like in appearance, and the others
oval or pear-shaped — and they are very sensitive to
light, retreating at once from the direct rays of the
sun or from a light flashed on them, but they do not
appear to see anything at all, recognising neither
friends nor enemies by sight, however close at hand.
Tt was far otherwise with a wolf-spider in the same
cage. Running towards the Dugesiella it was clearly
aware of it at a distance of several inches, and could
not be persuaded to approach nearer. But the
supremacy of the sense of touch is most striking
when the spiders are courting. When the male is
seeking the female he seems quite unaware of her
proximity unless he accidentally brushes up against
her. If he loses contact for a moment he is quite at
sea and wanders blindly about, turning, perhaps, to
the left when the least motion to the right would
bring them together again. This frequently happens
when he has accidentally touched the female with one
of the hind legs. He immediately turns about, and
if she is still there, all is well, but if she has chanced
to move out of reach, he is quite at a loss. Neither
sight nor sound nor smell guide him, but touch
only. The delicacy of this sense, however, is quite

102 SPIDERS [OH.

remarkable. He seems to be aware at once of the
nature of the object which touches him, assuming
a threatening attitude if the touch is hostile, or
pouncing instantly if hungry and the touch is that of
a passing insect. If, however, the insect is lucky
enough to escape, it is in no danger of pursuit.

As in the case of many spiders— though by no
means of all — his courting is not unattended with
peril. The tragic fate which sometimes overtakes
the male spider has so hit the popular imagination
that there is a general impression that the female
spider is a confirmed misanthrope and desires the life
of any suiter bold enough to approach her. Not at
all! We have simply to remember that spiders are
carnivorous and prone to cannibalism. If the female
happens to be hungry she makes no nice discrimina-
tion between an amorous male and a succulent grass-
hopper ; if replete, she may find time for the play of
softer emotions. The male of D. Jientzi appears to
be more or less prepared for a hostile reception on
the part of the female, for the thighs of his front legs
are furnished with spurs at their extremity and with
these he holds back and renders powerless her
threatening fangs.

There is no doubt that the spider's delicate sense
of touch resides in the hairs with which both body
and limbs are thickly clothed. They are of various
kinds — fine hairs, bristles, and stout spines — and

xi] THERAPHOSID SPIDERS 103

many of them are supplied with nerve-fibres at the
base. The finer hairs are probably not sensory, and
they are, in the case of some Avicularid spiders very
easily shed, and have a strongly irritant action on the
hand that touches them, not unlike the sting of a nettle.
It is not at all unusual for one large Avicularid
spider, Psalmopoem cambridgii, to be brought over
to England in cases of bananas from the W. Indies.
Mr James Adams of Dunfermline has kept two
specimens alive for a considerable time. The first
specimen lived in captivity for two years and nine
months, during which it moulted five times but
grew very little in si/e. Arriving in September, it
was at first fed on flies, and in a few weeks, when
these began to fail, it accepted beetles, consuming

about three a dav. In November, even these insects

«/

were difficult to obtain, and recourse was had to
cockroaches. At first about three cockroaches a
week were eaten but the number decreased until, in
the middle of March it ceased feeding altogether,
and on April 13 it cast its skin. It moulted
again in October, and twice a year for the rest of its
life — in spring and autumn. During six months it
took no food at all, and very little for four months
previously. At the last moult but one it lost a limb,
which however, reappeared when the spider again
changed its skin, though it never attained the proper
size.

104 SPIDERS [CH.

With spiders, as with insects, moulting is a very
serious matter, involving much more than the mere
casting off of an external coat. If all does not go
well limbs may easily be lost in the operation, nor is
it rare to meet with instances in which the animal has
perished in its unsuccessful attempt to discard the
old integument.

Mr Adams' second specimen was kept alive for
three years and ten months. It moulted only once
each year — in June or July — and it died in the act
of casting its skin. In the case of these spiders,
also, it was noted that insects supplied to them as
food displayed no fear whatever. There were always
a few cockroaches in the same box, and they were
often observed actually with the spider in its nest,
but no notice was taken of them unless their host
chanced to be hungry. A photograph of this spider
is given in the Frontispiece.

It is an interesting fact that many of the Avi-
culariidae of Southern Asia and Australia possess a
sound-producing apparatus which is entirely lacking
in African and American forms, but this is a subject
which deserves a chapter to itself.

xn] STRTDULATIOK 105

CHAPTER XII

STRIDULATION

MANY of the Arthropoda — the large group which
includes insects and crustaceans as well as Arachnida
-are able to produce sounds, a fact familiar enough
in such insects as crickets and grass-hoppers. As,
however, the breathing apparatus of these animals is
entirely different from that of mammals and has no
connection whatever with the mouth and alimentary
canal, the mode of sound production is not at all the
same. Instead of setting vocal chords in vibration
by the expulsion of air through the larynx, insects
"sing': or "chirp" by rapidly rubbing together
certain specially roughened surfaces, which constitute
what is called a "stridulating organ." In crickets, for
instance, each tegmen or wing-cover is provided with
a kind of file, and when the wing-covers are rapidly
vibrated, the edge of each rubs against the opposite
file, and a loud shrill sound is produced.

The stridulating apparatus is by no means always
in the same place ; the thorax may rub against the
abdomen, the leg against the wing-cover, or one of
the mouth appendages against another. Nor are
the sounds produced always audible to human ears ;

106 SPIDERS [CH.

at all events there are many creatures with what
appear to be very well developed stridulating organs
whose note has never yet been heard by any naturalist,
but there are doubtless numberless sounds beyond the
range of our hearing, which is limited, like the key-
board of a piano.

Now such a stridulating apparatus has been de-
tected in many spiders, and always in one of three
situations — either between the two parts of the body
(cephalothorax and abdomen) or between the palps
and the mandibles, or between the palps and the front
legs. In some of the Theridiidae the hind end of the
cephalothorax is roughened and fits into a sort of
socket in the abdomen which is provided with parallel
ridges, so that when the abdomen is vibrated the two
surfaces are rubbed together, but no one has yet
heard a sound produced by these spiders. The
stridulating Aivculariidae, however, are easily heard,
the sound in some cases being described as a kind of
whistle, — in others it has been said to have the effect
of shot dropping upon a plate.

There are two quite distinct purposes for which
sounds may be produced ; they may either serve as
a call from one sex to the other, or as a warning to
intruders. Obviously the first purpose requires a
sense of hearing in the sex appealed to, and it is
interesting to note that in the Theridiidae, which are
among the spiders which show some appreciation of

xn] STRIDULATION 107

sound, the organ is well developed in the male only,
being rudimentary or altogether absent in the female,
while in the Aviculariidae, which appear to be quite
deaf, both sexes possess it equally. In them its
function is probably to warn off its enemies — a
purpose for which it is not at all necessary that the
spider itself should hear it.

Sometimes sounds have been quite wrongly attri-
buted to spiders ; there is, for example, an Australian
species widely known among natives as the "barking"
or "booming" spider, for no better reason than that
the spider has been found in the day-time at a spot
where the booming was heard at night. This case was
investigated by Professor Baldwin Spencer, who found
that quails were really responsible for the sounds
with which the spider was credited. The creature
could, however, achieve a kind of whistle by rubbing
its palps against its mandibles. Its stridulating
apparatus was of the type common among the
Aviculariidae. Its principle is that of the musical
box, where nail-like projections on a barrel strike
against the teeth of a metal comb, except that the
barrel is stationary and the comb is moved up and
down against it. The barrel is here represented by
the first joint of the mandible which is beset on its
outer side with spines. The inner edge of the first
joint of the palp is furnished with " keys r which are
rubbed against the mandible spines when the palps

108

SPIDERS

[CH.

are vibrated. These keys are very curious structures.
They are of various lengths, and their shape will
perhaps be understood when it is said that a tolerable
model of one would be obtained by taking a flat iron
bar, sharpening it at the end, and then so twisting it
in the middle that the flat surface of one half is at
right-angles to the flat surface of the other half. Its

Fig. 11. Three "keys" of a stridulating organ, after Spencer.

appearance therefore varies according to the point ot
view, the narrow edge of one half and the broad edge
of the other being visible at the same time. A moment's
consideration will show that this torsion is calculated
to give great rigidity to the keys, for when the outer
half is struck on the flat surface the inner half opposes
its greatest diameter to the shock. A similar structure
is found in all the Theraphosid spiders which are able

xii] STRIDULATION 109

to produce a sound, though sometimes the "keys'3
are on the mandibles and the spines on the palp.

In Staten Island there is a wolf-spider — Lycosa
kochi — which is known as the "purring" or "drum-
ming" spider because of a curious habit which the male
has, at mating time, of rapidly drumming on the dead
leaves in a wood with its palps. It runs hither and
thither over the ground as if in search of something,
pausing at short intervals to " purr," and the sound
had frequently been heard and correctly attributed
to the spider before the way in which it is produced
was discovered. In this case it is probable that the
production of sound is not the object of the spider at
all, for we have no evidence that wolf-spiders hear.
On the other hand rapid tapping with the palps is
a very characteristic action with male spiders at
mating time, and it is easy to believe that contiguous
dry leaves would conduct vibrations to a female at
some distance away and inform her of the presence
of the male. Just so, as we have seen, our English
Theraphosid announces his arrival by tapping on the
exposed part of the nest of the female.

110 SPIDERS [CH.

CHAPTER XIII

THE SPINNING APPARATUS, AND THE FEET

SEEING that the possession of spinnerets is a
characteristic of all spiders, and that a great deal
of the interest attaching to their life-history arises

»/

from their spinning operations, any account of the
group, however brief, would be incomplete without
some attempt to describe these remarkable organs.

Among the spiders to which the attention of the
reader has been directed, some have been highly ac-
complished spinners, constructing complicated snares,
retreats and egg-cocoons, while in the case of others
the spinning work is very meagre and employed
chiefly for the protection of the eggs. As might be
expected, the organs attain a very much higher
development in some spiders than in others, and the
most complex of all are those of the Epeiridae, the
constructors of the circular snare.

Now in the first place it is rather striking that
the spiders with the most conspicuous spinnerets are
by no means the most able spinners. The " bird-
eating r spiders are a case in point, for they spin
very little, yet two of their spinnerets are much more
obvious than anything Epeira has to show, for they
protrude behind the body and strike the eye at the first

xni] SPINNING APPARATUS AND FEET 111

glance. Indeed excessive length has nothing to do
with complexity but is found wherever a wide sweep
is necessary in laying down the threads — as we saw in
the case of Agelena, when constructing its sheet-web.

Roughly speaking, the spinnerets are very mobile
finger-like projections, generally situated under the
hind end of the abdomen and, bearing more or less
numerous tubes from which the silken threads proceed.
The usual number of spinnerets is six, but there is a
pretty wide range, one group of spiders having only
two, while a few possess eight.

The spinnerets, then, are only the bearers of the
actual tubes which emit the silk. The distribution
of the tubes themselves is different in the different
kinds of spiders, but it is usually possible to distinguish
two kinds. There are generally present a large
number of very fine cylindrical tubes or " spools '
and a few conical tubes of much larger base, which
are called spigots. Each of these orifices, whether
on spool or spigot, is connected by a fine tube with a
separate silk gland, or organ for manufacturing silk,
situated within the spider's abdomen. Epeira has
about 600 of such glands, each with its own terminal
spool or spigot, and the large number of these tubes
has given rise to a misconception that is very widely
spread — namely that the spider's line, fine as it is, is
" woven ' of hundreds of threads of very much finer
silk. This is not so, as we shall presently see.

112 SPIDERS [CH.

Though Epeira has some 600 silk-glands, it has
only five different kinds of gland, manufacturing silk
of different properties. No other family of spiders
has so many, though two other kinds of gland have
been found in less elaborate spinners. Within the
spider the silk is fluid but it solidifies on meeting the
air, each thread hardening as it emerges though
still continuous with the fluid contents of the gland,
so that the drawing out of a silken thread is just like
the operation so familiar with the glue-pot, or with
spun glass, except that the hardening is not due to
cooling but to exposure to the air. This general
description will, it is hoped, make an account of the
organs in Epeira more comprehensible.

The spinnerets of Epeira are so small and incon-
spicuous that their disposition is not very easy to
make out. When not in use they form a tiny cone
under the tip of the abdomen, and only four are
visible, their free ends being so brought together as
entirely to conceal a small central pair. There are
really, then, three pairs of spinnerets which we may
call at once the anterior, median and posterior pairs,
though when at rest only the anteriors and posteriors
can be seen. If the spider is observed with a pocket-
lens as it crawls about in a glass tube it will be
noticed that the spinnerets are capable of great
mobility. Their ends can be separated or brought
together, or they may be made to rub against each

xm] SPINNING APPARATUS AND FEET 113

other or against the sides of the tube. The anteriors
and posteriors, moreover, are two-jointed though
the medians consist only of a single joint.

So much can be seen without any great magnifi-
cation, but the microscope will be necessary if a
complete understanding of their mechanism is to be
arrived at. What it reveals will now be briefly
described, and will, it is hoped, be made tolerably
clear by the accompanying figures which are simplified
by the omission of a large number of bristles which
tend to hide the essential structure, and by a great
reduction in the number of "spools," though the
spigots are all indicated.

The anterior spinneret (that nearest the head end
of the animal) is a sort of cone, divided into a large
basal joint and a small terminal joint. The latter
bears on its inner side a single spigot (fig. 1 2 a) and
is crowned with a battery of spools, about a hundred
in number.

The median spinneret has three spigots, two at
the tip and one on the inner side (fig. 12 &), and about
a hundred spools, mostly on its inner surface.

The posterior spinneret is divided very obliquely
into two joints, so that the terminal joint extends
much lower down on the inner than on the outer
side. It has five spigots in groups of three and two,
and again there are about a hundred spools.

Now the point that I wish to make clear is that

w. s. 8

114

SPIDERS

[CH.

there is no interweaving of the out-put of these
various spools and spigots. At the moment of
emission the threads are adhesive, and can be made
to stick to the glass or to one another, but they are
not in anv sense either fused or interwoven. For

«/

ordinary operations the brunt of the work is borne
by the spigots marked a in the figure, sometimes
reinforced by silk from the spigots on the median

ABC

Fig. 12. View, from the inner side, of one of each of the three spin-
nerets of Epeira. A, anterior ; B, median ; C, posterior spinneret.

spinnerets marked b, the functions of all the other
spools and spigots being special and occasional. For
instance, when Epeira is laying down a foundation
line, this is what happens. The spider sits down, so
to speak, on a twig, separating its spinnerets and
rubbing them on the surface. As it raises its abdomen
a multitude of little threads are seen merging into
what appears to be a single line.

In reality the line is double, emerging from the

xni] SPINNING APPARATUS AND FEET 115

spigots (a) on the anterior spinnerets, and it can
easily be separated into two — and two only — any
where along its length. The multitudinous spools
have emitted short lengths of silk to anchor the
foundation line at its commencement, but thev are

•/

then closed and have no share in the ever-lengthening
line as the spider lets itself drop or crawls away to
attach it to a new spot. One of their uses, then, is
to anchor the main lines from the spigots to external
objects, but they have another function not less
important. Everybody has seen a garden-spider
trussing up a captured fly. It is held in the jaws
and front legs and slowly revolved while with its
hind legs the spider draws out bands of silk from the
spinnerets and swathes it like a mummy. No silken
rope, this, of fused or interwoven threads, but a
broad band, every strand of which is separate and
distinct and proceeds from a different spool. Two or
three hundred fine threads wound simultaneously
round the insect form a much more effectual winding
sheet than would a single cord composed of them all.
So far we have accounted for the spools, and for
one pair of spigots — those on the anterior spinnerets.
The lower spigot (b) on the middle spinneret often
assists in laying down a foundation line when extra
strength is required. In that case the line is four-
fold, and can easily be split into four along its whole
length, the threads from the middle spinnerets being

8—2

116 SPIDERS [CH.

rather finer than those from the anterior, but
composed of the same kind of silk.

There remain seven pairs of spigots whose function
has still to be explained, two on the middle and five
on the posterior spinnerets. The three which are
clustered together on the posterior spinneret do not
form silk at all, that is, the material they emit does
not harden on exposure to the air but remains fluid
and adhesive. When the spider is spinning the
"viscid spiral' of its web it is from these spigots
that the sticky matter oozes, enveloping the true
silken lines and presently resolving itself into little
globules in the manner already described.

The remaining spigots — two on the middle and
two on the posterior spinnerets are employed only in
spinning the egg-cocoon, and the silk they produce
is unlike that used in making the snare, being much
stronger and less elastic, and — in the case of the
garden-spider — of a yellow colour. In the occasional
attempts which have been made to substitute spiders
for silkworms as commercial silk producers, it is only
this cocoon silk that has given any considerable
results, the produce of the other glands being far too
frail for profitable use. Such attempts, however,
have always failed, principally for a reason quite
unconnected with the particular nature of the silk,
namely, the difficulty of keeping the spiders in
captivity. It is a simple matter to supply dozens of

xin] SPINNING APPARATUS AND FEET 117

silkworms in the same box with mulberry leaves, but
spiders require separate compartments or they will
fight and devour each other, and the provision of
suitable food for them is such a troublesome matter
that it has proved quite impracticable on a commercial
scale.

We have incidentally seen that there are quite a
number of different operations in which the spinning
apparatus takes part. There is the line which most
spiders lay down as they wander, and which secures
them from the danger of a fall if they lose their foot-
ing ; there is the snare for catching prey, the nest or
retreat, and the egg-cocoon, and in addition, silk from
the spinnerets may be used to enwrap and paralyse
captured insects, or to assist the young spider to
migrate. Since the Epeiridae perform all these
operations, and are, moreover, the most finished of
snare-makers, it does not surprise us to find in them
the highest development of the silk glands and the
most complete battery of spools and spigots on the
spinnerets. Many spiders, as we know, make no snare
at all, and in the case of some, very little spinning is
attempted beyond the manufacture of a rather rudi-
mentary covering for the eggs. Naturally a less
complex spinning apparatus is required, and we
accordingly find that jumping spiders, for instance,
have only about fifty silk-glands comprising three
different kinds of gland, while the glands found in

118 SPIDERS [CH.

such of the large Aviculariidae as have been examined
have been all alike.

There is in some spiders a spinning organ, not to
be found in Epeira, which deserves a passing notice.
It does not take the place of spinnerets, of which the
usual three pairs are present, but it is situated in
front of them, and only occurs in the female of the
species. Its peculiarity is that the silk does not
emerge from projecting spools ; but through fine
holes in a sieve-like plate, called a cribellum, which
is flush with the surface of the abdomen. It has no
mobility, therefore, and the threads from it have to
be combed out and distributed by the spider's hind
leg. For the better accomplishment of this purpose
there is a special comb of stiff hairs or bristles, called
a calamistrwm, on each of the fourth pair of legs.

The web of these spiders is not unlike that of
Agelena, but of a rather finer texture, and it can be
seen, on magnification, to consist of an irregular
ground- work over which have been spread wavy
bands of excessively fine silk, combed out from the
orifices of the cribellum glands. Some of these
cribellate-spiders, of the genus Amanrobius, are not
uncommon in our cellars and out-houses ; their bodies
are of stouter build and their legs much shorter than
those of the common house-spider.

We have no space for anything approaching a full
description of the anatomy of spiders, but there is one

xni] SPINNING APPARATUS AND FEET 119

other point of structure of which the reader has been
promised some account. Attention was directed to
the fact that while some spiders are helpless on
smooth perpendicular surfaces unless they have lines
to cling to, others can run with ease upon the walls or
even the ceiling, of a room.

The last joint or tarsus of the spider's leg is very
different in the two cases. It always terminates in
claws — either two or three — so that any species can

Fig. 13. Foot of Jumping Spider (on left), foot of Garden

Spider (on right).

make some show of climbing where the surface is
rough and there is anything to cling to, but to obtain
a hold on a polished surface it needs a special con-
trivance. This takes the form of a pad of curiously
modified hairs, called a scapula. The hairs are club-
shaped, narrow at their stalk and swelling towards
the tip, and their clinging power seems to be due to a
viscid secretion. The foot of any jumping spider will
showr this structure well. Epeira has no scopula, and
its climbing is always laborious unless it has a thread

120 SPIDERS [CH.

to cling to, but it is supreme as a rope walker, tread-
ing daintily on the most delicate threads, mounting a
line "hand over hand" with great agility, and mani-
pulating the silk in its various spinning operations
with unerring skill and facility.

CHAPTER XIV

THE ENEMIES OF SPIDERS

WHEN one comes to consider the multitudinous
risks to which a spider is exposed during the whole
course of its life it seems at first a little surprising that
the whole tribe has not long ago been exterminated.
Spiders continue to flourish, however, and it is very
clear that however careless Nature may be of the
individual she is extremely solicitous about the
race.

The infant mortality among these creatures must
be appalling. There is first their cannibalistic pro-
pensity to be reckoned with. Xewly hatched spiders
while still within the cocoon seldom attack each
other, but as soon as ever each sets up for itself, no
quarter is given. It often happens that members of
a brood of sedentary spiders spin their first snares in
close contiguity, and if food is scarce they eat one
another without compunction. It is said that a few

xiv] THE ENEMIES OF SPIDERS 121

individuals of a brood may be reared to maturity on
no other food than their sisters and brothers ! The
case of the survivor of the " Nancy Bell " in the Bab
Ballads would be exceedingly commonplace in the
aranead world. We have seen, too, how, on occasion,
At y pus will devour her young if they do not leave
the nest with due expedition. Then if the weather
conditions chance to be unfavourable just at the
period of departure from the cocoon broods are
liable to perish wholesale, washed away and destroyed
by deluges of rain ; myriads, too, must be carried out
to sea in the course of their ballooning operations,
and never come safely to land.

But the mortality is probably even greater at a
still earlier stage, for hosts of spiders' eggs never
hatch at all, and this for two reasons. In the first
place, the silk of spiders is a favourite material
with many birds for the lining of their nests, and
many of them use the cocoons for this purpose.
Secondly, there are numerous Ichneumon flies which
attack and parasitise spiders' cocoons, piercing them
with their ovipositors and laying their eggs inside.
The eggs of the Ichneumon fly hatch first and feed
upon the eggs of the spider. Two such flies are
known to attack the cocoons of the garden-spider,
and not a single spider will emerge from a cocoon
thus parasitised. The spiders whose cocoons are
most subject to these attacks belong, as might perhaps

122 SPIDERS [CH.

be expected, to the sedentary groups, and the most
elaborate but unavailing precautions are often taken
to render them Ichneumon-proof. The cocoons of
the peripatetic wolf-spiders have never been observed
to be parasitised.

Even if a spider has survived these early perils
there are still many dangers ahead. During its
period of growth it has to moult some eight or nine
times, and the operation is at least as dangerous as,
say, an attack of measles to the human infant. For
some time beforehand feeding ceases, and the animal
becomes inert and apparently dead, but presently the
integument splits, and out struggles the spider, pale
and soft, and leaving behind it not only the outer
skin but the lining of most of its alimentary canal
and of its breathing tubes. Sometimes, as we have
said, it fails to extricate itself and dies ; quite often
it emerges with the loss of a limb, which will re-
appear— reduced in size — at the next moult. It is
necessary to go into retreat for a time after moulting,
till strength has returned and the integument has
hardened.

But the dangers of moulting, though not negligible,
are insignificant beside others to which the spider is
exposed during its later stages, nor is a prolonged
dearth of food necessarily fatal, for, as we have seen, a
spider can fast for an astonishing time and yet retain
its health if it has a fair supply of water. But there

xiv] THE ENEMIES OF SPIDERS 123

are terrible enemies at hand from which it has little
or no protection. Birds, of course, come first, for
to most insectivorous birds spiders are acceptable
morsels. I have seen a hedge sparrow going con-
scientiously over a trellis work and picking out all
the spiders from the nooks and corners. Then in-
sectivorous mammals make no distinction between
the Insecta and the Arachnida, and often eat spiders
with avidity, as also will toads and lizards.

Moreover, Ichneumon flies do not confine their
attention to cocoons, but often attack well-grown
spiders. They invariably lay their eggs on one spot-
at the very front of the abdomen, near the cephalo-
thorax, where the spider is powerless to dislodge
them. The egg hatches out to a grub which is a
veritable " old man of the sea " on the spider's back,
and there it remains until it causes the death of its
victim by feeding on the contents of the abdomen.
Four such Ichneumon flies have been found to attack
the gar den -spider, and no kind of spider seems
exempt. How they contrive to deposit their eggs in
the proper place without great danger of themselves
falling a prey to their victims is a mystery. To
venture into a garden-spider's web for the purpose
would seem a fool-hardy proceeding. The actual
deposition of the egg has seldom been witnessed, but
in one of the few cases that have come under
observation the spider made little resistance and

124 SPIDERS [CH.

appeared quite demoralised. It was hanging from
a thread, down which the Ichneumon fly was seen to

*/

crawl. When it reached the spider the latter dropped
an inch lower on two or three occasions but then
remained passive, and the parasite on Hearing it,
turned round, backed down the line, and with great
care and deliberation attached an egg at the usual
spot.

But no enemies of spiders are more terrible than
some of the solitary wasps, and gruesome indeed is
the fate of any creature that falls into their clutches.
The social wasps often capture spiders to feed their
young but in their case the proceeding is summary
and without any finesse. They merely catch a spider,
sting it to death, cut it to pieces with their jaws, and
feed it into the mouths of their expectant grubs.
The treatment is brutal enough, but at all events it
is expeditious. Now the solitary "'digger'1 wasps
never see their young. They make cells, either by
burrowing in the ground or by agglomerating particles
of mud or gravel, and in each cell is placed an egg
together with sufficient food to last the grub which
hatches out for the whole of its larval existence.
The mother will not be at hand — as is the social
worker-wasp — to supply new food as required, and it
is therefore necessary so to arrange matters that the
food provided may retain its fresh condition for at
least a fortnight. On the other hand the victims must

xiv J THE ENEMIES OF SPIDERS 125

be deprived of all power of motion, otherwise the egg
will stand a great chance of being displaced and
crushed, and even if it hatches it will be unable to
commence its meal upon the struggling spider.

Now in the whole range of animal instinct there
is nothing more remarkable than the manner in which
the solitary wasps have learnt to solve this problem.
The solution lies in so stinging the victim that it is
paralysed but not killed, and though quite unable to
move, it neither shrivels nor decays, but remains
perfectly sound and edible for two or three weeks.
To accomplish this result the wasp acts as though
it possessed a knowledge of the minute anatomy of
its victim, and knew to a hair's breadth the position
of the principal nerve ganglia which control its
actions. Into these it unerringly thrusts its sting.
But even accuracy of aim is not everything ; there
must be the finest discrimination in the severity of
the wound. A slight excess, and the animal is killed ;
too timid a thrust will not destroy movement. When
the delicate operation has been successfully performed,
the paralysed spider is dragged into the cell, placed
on its back, and an egg carefully deposited at the
base of its abdomen, after which the cell is sealed up.
Some wasps, instead of providing a single large
spider, store their cells with a number of smaller
victims, all rendered limp and motionless.

In attacking a spider the first action of one of

126 SPIDERS [CH.

these wasps is to remove it from its natural environ-
ment. A garden-spider in its web, or a burrowing
spider in its tunnel are more or less formidable, but
if the one can be thrown down, or the other dragged
forth into the open, they are well-nigh defenceless.
Therefore in attacking an Epeirid the wasp first darts
at it, seizes a leg, and attempts to jerk it out of the
web. If unsuccessful, the spider will now be on its
guard, and the wasp leaves it and tries the same
manoeuvre on another individual. Taken by surprise,
it is instantly thrown to the ground, and can then
offer no effectual resistance. Even the large " bird-
eaters ' fall victims to these terrible foes.

CHAPTER XV

SOME CONCLUDING REFLEXIONS

IN the foregoing pages we have been able to deal
with very few out of the vast number of known
spiders ; yet the examples we have chosen for study
are fairly typical of some of the more important
groups, and calculated to give a tolerably just idea of
the general economy of the tribe. In any case even
such a fragmentary study as the present gives us food
for thought. There is a question which the writer
has so often been asked that he is inclined to deal

xv] SOME CONCLUDING REFLEXIONS 127

with it in anticipation, though perhaps he is wronging
his readers in supposing that they desire to propound
any such conundrum. This question is : What is the
tixe of spiders?

Now underlying this question there is surely a
very unwarranted assumption that all the myriad
creatures which exist have, as a reason for their
existence, some reference to the activities and desires
of mankind. As far as it has any meaning at all it
amounts to this : What benefit does man derive from
spiders? But it seems to take for granted that some
benefits must accrue to man from these creatures, or
they would not have the audacity to persist in living.
Well, if the question in this amended form is in
urgent need of an answer, the reply must be: very
little if any. Certainly spiders prey as a rule on
insects and no doubt kill many which might injure us,
and in the constant battles between man and insect
pests, instances have been recorded where particular
species of spider have fought on the side of man with
appreciable effect. But then they are as likely to
devour our insect friends as our insect enemies,
impartially slaying the just together with the un-
just, so that little stress can be laid on their utility on
this score. Indeed there is quite as good a case to be
made out of man benefiting spiders as of spiders
benefiting man, for his architectural proclivities have
provided some species with secure homes from which

128 SPIDERS [CH.

most of their enemies — except man himself — are
excluded, and where they are sheltered from the
storms which are so fatal to their relatives outside,
protected from extremes of temperature, and rendered
so independent of times and seasons that the number
of broods they produce in the year has increased.
Whether a creature is useful or injurious is entirely a
matter of the point of view. There are several animals
with regard to which the opinions of the farmer and
the gamekeeper are diametrically opposed !

But if anything emerges from the study in which
we have been engaged, it is surely this fact : that
wherever there is a niche in nature capable of
sustaining life, to that niche some animal will sooner
or later adapt itself without any reference to man's
desires or interests. We have seen spiders, all built
on the same ground-plan, so to speak, and with the
same essential organs, so modified in the details of
structure and inherited instincts as to be able to
thrive under the most diverse conditions. Think, for
instance, of the water- spider and the desert Tarantula,
or consider the difference in mode of life between
the sedentary garden-spider and the hunting Attid.

Incessant competition in the struggle for life no
doubt urged on primeval spiders to strike out new
modes of existence. Under slightly novel conditions

«/

the best adapted or most adaptable survived and
were pioneers in the occupation of a new territory

xv] SOME CONCLUDING REFLEXIONS 129

till the widely different capacities and habits which
we now wonder at were slowly evolved.

Another point to ponder on is the wonderful
complexity of the instincts which govern the actions
of spiders ; the extraordinary operations they can
perform, entirely untaught, and of the object of
which it is impossible to believe they are aware. We
have seen that, in the most highly organised species,
the sense organs — except perhaps that of touch — are
but moderately developed, and the power of memory,
the basis of intelligent action, but feeble ; yet their
inherited impulses suffice for all ordinary emergencies,
and recur with unfailing precision at the proper
periods of their lives. They are machine-like, perhaps,
but what extraordinarily competent machines ! The
light of what we call intelligence burns low, but a
glimmer of it can be detected here and there.

If one comes to think of it, the egg of a creature
of complex instincts is a particularly wonderful atom ;
it contains not only the germs of all the complicated
bodily structure, but there are bound up in it also
the impulses that are to come into play at certain
definite periods only of the spider's life-history. And
these impulses are not mere vague reminders that
now is the time to spin a snare, or to weave an
egg-cocoon ; they prescribe precisely how it is to be
done, involving perhaps a dozen different spinning
operations in one unvarying order. Viewed in this

w. s. 9

130 SPIDERS [CH.

light, the germ of an insect or a spider would seem
in a sense to be more complex than that of an animal
whose vague instinctive impulses are under the
direction of intelligence, and can be carried out in a
variety of ways according to circumstances.

One of the most surprising things about the egg
of a spider is the amount of energy stored up in it.
A bird's egg, huge in comparison, contains material
sufficient to build up the body of a fledgeling just
sufficiently active to be able to accept from the
mother that first nutriment without which it will
speedily die.

But turn back to the account of the tarantula-
spider. Its egg is small — perhaps the twelfth of an
inch in diameter ; yet it not only produces a spiderling
complete in form, and provided with all the complex
instincts of its tribe, but there is so much energy to
spare that, for months, without any new food-supply,
the young spider can lead an active life, frequently
descending from and remounting its mother's back,
and can even put forth silk on its own account ! The
objects which a conjuror produces from a hat seem
trifles in comparison with the outcome of a spider's
egg — the actual material seems astonishing from so
small a source, but whence comes all this surprising
surplus of energy ? Fabre suggests that it is supplied
by the direct rays of the sun, to which the Tarantula
exposes in turn all parts of the egg-cocoon.

xv] SOME CONCLUDING REFLEXIONS 131

All through their lives spiders seem to be gifted
in a high degree with the power of extracting the
utmost value, in substance and in energy, from their
food. Consider the great Theraphosid spiders — the
so called bird-eaters. They have a massive body,
and great muscular power to sustain ; yet they are
never heavy feeders and can go for many months
without any food at all. And it is not as though they
were dormant during this period of abstention ; their
vital processes seem to be going on as usual the
whole time, and they are ready at any moment to
resent attack, or to employ their spinning organs
during their long fast. True hibernation, as we have
seen, does not occur in this group ; if it did, there
would be nothing remarkable in the occasional long
abstention from food. The vitality of a hibernating
animal is practically at a standstill ; all its vital
operations — breathing, blood-circulation, muscular
action — are reduced to the lowest possible limit, and
it very likely expends no more energy during its
winter sleep than it would during a day or two of
active summer life.

But of such reflexions there is no end, and many
such will doubtless arise spontaneously in the mind
of the thoughtful reader, and it is for that very
reason that the study of the life-history of any animal
is of such absorbing interest. It is not contended
that spiders are any more wonderful than any other

132 SPIDERS [CH. XV

group that might have been selected. There is, of
course, a special interest attaching to the study of
animals very much nearer to man in bodily structure
and mental equipment, but the endeavour to under-
stand the actions and appreciate the outlook on
nature of creatures far remote from man, however
unsuccessful, has its own fascination.

And this is what the mere collector entirely misses.
Collecting is of course necessary, for a complete
examination is never possible in the living specimen,
and moreover without examples kept as types for
reference we should lose our way in the multitude
of living forms. But as an end in itself it is of vastly
inferior value. The writer will be well content if he
has succeeded in arousing the curiosity of some with
regard to the humble life that surrounds us, and in
stimulating a few who possess the requisite keenness
and patience to add to our store of knowledge by new
observations of their own.

LITERATURE 133

LITERATURE

MOST of the large publications on the Arachnid fauna of different
countries give some preliminary account of the habits of spiders,
but the only considerable work entirely devoted to that subject is
Me Cook's American Spiders and their Spinning-work (Phila-
delphia, 1893). A small but interesting book on The Structure
and Habits of Spiders was published ten years previously by
Emerton (Boston, 1883). But the reader who wishes to pursue
further the study of some point to which his attention has been
called in the foregoing pages may desire to be referred, for fuller
details, to the original papers.

Many writers have described the spinning of the circular snare,
and indeed it is quite easy for any one to watch the operation for
himself; but Me Cook goes into the matter in great detail and
figures many interesting variants of its normal form. J. H. Fabre's
delightful Souvenirs entomologiques (Delagrave, Paris) have
been issued at intervals for many years past, and mostly deal
with insects. In Series 9, however, he has an entertaining
chapter on "Les Epeires." That the "viscid globules" arranged
themselves mechanically was first demonstrated by C. V. Boys
(Nature, xl, 1889,. p. 250). The same writer experimented on the
sense of hearing in spiders (Nature, xxiii, 1880, p. 149). The
interesting paper by G. and E. Peckham on the mental powers of
spiders is to be found in the Journal of Morphology ( Boston U .8. A.)
i, 1887, p. 403.

The aeronautic habit has engaged the attention of many
arachnologists. Blackwall dealt with it in various papers in the
Transactions of the Linnaean Society between 1833 and 1841,
but the most complete account is to be found in Me Cook's original
papers which are summarised in his book already cited.

With regard to the spinning operations of Agelena the reader

134 SPIDERS

may consult a paper by the present writer in the Annals and
Magazine of Natural History, August, 1891.

The habits of the Water Spider were first described by de Lignac
in a Memoire published in 1749. Since that date many writers,
notably Wagner and Plateau, have dealt with the subject. The
paper by the last named in the Annales des Sciences naturelles,
1867, p. 345, is particularly worth reading.

E. Peckham deals with "Protective Resemblances in Spiders'-
in the publication of the Natural History Society of Wisconsin
for 1889.

The reader interested in the habits of the Wolf-spiders must
certainly consult the chapters on " La Lycose de Narbonne " in
Series 9 of Fabre's Souvenirs entomologiques.

The classical account by the Peckhanis, of the love dances of
jumping spiders appeared conjointly with the paper byE. Peckham
on "Protective Resemblances" cited above.

For the habits of Atypus affinis (or piceus) the reader is
referred to the very complete account given by Enock in the
Transactions of the Entomological Society (London, 1885, p. 394)
of observations extending through several years.

The larger Aviculariidae have been dealt with in various papers
by Pocock, and the particulars given with regard to DugesieUa
were taken from a paper by Petrunkevitch in the Zoologischen
JahrMichern, xxxi, 1911.

In the Archil' fii r Naturgeschichte,i, 1889, Apstein published
an admirable piece of research on the structure and function of
the spinning glands of spiders. He investigated the glands
present in the various families, and the particular arrangement of
the spools and spigots on the spinnerets.

A paper by the present writer in the Quarterly Journal of
Microscopical Science for April 1890 continued this investigation,
and shewed the special operations in which the various glands
participated in the case of the Garden Spider.

INDEX

Aerial flights, 32

Agelena, 38-46

Agelenidae, 11, 38

Araneae theraphosae, 87

Araneae verae, 87, 89

Argyroneta, 3, 49, 50, 51, 52

Arthropoda, 6

Attidae, 33, 4, 52, 76-87

Atypidae, 93

At y pus ajfinis, 89, 121

Balloons, 34
Banana spider, 103
Barking spider, 107
Bird-eating spiders, 25, 89, 99
Body parasites, 123
Burrows, 63

Galamistrum, 118

Cannibalism, 33, 120
Carrying the young, 73
Characteristics of spiders, 4
Chelicerae, 10, 87
Cocoon, 12, 44, 64
Cocoon of Agelena, 44
Crab-spiders, 52
Cribellum, 118
Crustacea, 6
Cyclosa conica, 28

Darwin's Pike, 22

Desis, 49
Drassidae, 11
Drumming spider, 109
Dugesiella hentzi, 99

Educability, 22, 27, 28
Egg parasites, 121
Enemies of spiders, 120
Energy stored in the egg, 130
Epeira, 3, 19, 112-116, 119
E. diademata, 13
Eyes of jumping spiders, 78

Feet of spiders, 119
Foundation lines, 13, 14, 16, 17

Garden-spider, 2, 13, 15, 19, 20,
23, 27, 39, 78, 121, 123, 126,
128

Gossamer, 36

Habits of Agelena, 38

At y pus, 90

Jumping spiders, 79

Tarantula, 69

Theraphosid spiders, 99

Trap-door spiders, 95
Harvest spiders, 8
Hearing, 23, 101
Heteropoda venatorius, 37
Hibernation, 2, 131

136

INDEX

Hub, 13, 14
Huntsman spider, 37
Hyptiotes paradoxus, 31

Infant mortality, 120, 121
Instinct, 21, 22, 29, 46, 129

Jumping spiders, 4, 76-87

Linyphia, 3, 32
Love dances, 82-87
Lung-books, 10
Lycosa kochi, 109
Lycosa picta, 61
Lycosidae, 5, 33, 52, 58-76

Mammillae, 10
Marine spiders, 49
Mental powers, 20
Met a segmentata, 23
Mimicry, 55-58
Misnmena, 54
Moulting, 104, 122

Notched zone, 13, 14

Philodromus, 54
Phrynarachne, 57
Pirata, 59, 66
Poison of spiders, 75
Poison gland, 88
Psalmopoeus cambridgii, frontis-
piece, 103
Purring spider, 109

Eastellum, 98
Recognition of cocoons, 66
Ked spider, 8

Scopula, 119
Sight, 23, 60, 81. 101
Silk glands, 111, 112
Smell, 25, 100
Solitary wasps, 124, 125
Spigots, 111, 113-116
Spinnerets, 8, 110-118
Spinning apparatus, 110
Spinning glands, 111
Spinning operations, 117
Spools, 111, 113, 114, 115
Starvation, 122
Stridulation, 25, 105
Stimulating Keys, 107, 108

Tarantula, 68-74, 128
Tarsus, 119
Taste, 26

Theraphosa leblondi, 94
Theraphosidae, 25, 87-104
Theridiidae, 33
Theridion, 3, 23, 32
Thomisidae, 33, 52
Touch, 27, 101, 102
Tracheae, 6

Trap-door spiders, 89, 94, 98
Trap-snares, 31

Use of spiders, 127

Viscid spiral, 15, 18, 19, 20, 116

Water-spiders, 48-52
Wolf-spiders, 58, 76

Zebra spider, 77

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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2 Heredity in the Light of Recent Research. By L. Don-

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48 The Individual in the Animal Kingdom. By J. S. Huxley,
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27 Life in the Sea. By James Johnstone, B.Sc.
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28 The Migration of Birds. By T. A. Coward.
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32 Earthworms and their Allies. By F. E. Beddard, F.R.S.

74 The Flea. By H. Russell.

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30 The Natural History of Clay. By Alfred B. Searle.

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45 The Psychology of Insanity. By Bernard Hart, M.D.
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