Chapter IX: Appendix: A

_Nemesia (Mygale) meridionalis_, Costa.[97]

[Footnote 97: Costa, Fauna del Regno di Napoli, Aracnidi (1861), p. 14, tab. i. figs. 1-4. [Translation.]]

"M. fusco rufoque-flavicante, maculis obscurioribus, thorace radiatim, abdomine seriatim dispositis, subtus thorace rufescente, abdomine flavidulo, mandibulis spinarum serie unica, tarsis omnibus spinulosis."

"The cephalothorax oval, elongated and truncate in front, while the head is smooth and bare, with a group of eight eyes, a little keeled in the middle; of a fulvous-brown colour, with ten rather dusky spots arranged in rays, and corresponding to the direction of the eight legs (anche) and the two maxillæ. The mandibles are large, horizontal at first, then curved downwards, making a quarter of a circle, furnished with numerous hairs, especially on the inner side, and at the anterior extremity above there are mobile and rather long spines; below they are channelled, with six little teeth or spines on the edge (rilievo) of the inner face, clothed with many bristling hairs, with which the outside is also covered, but without any teeth; on the inner face they are flattened, so that they fit perfectly close. The fang is strong, curved, acute, and black. The maxillæ are clothed with brown hairs almost as the legs are, and at their extremity, on the outer side, stand the long palpi, rather hairy (pelacciuti), terminated by a very short and simple little claw. The sternal lip is very small and round. The abdomen oval, longer or shorter according to age, dusky ash in colour, spotted with brown, and covered with short and depressed (rasicci) hairs. The brown spots are disposed in slanting lines, placed obliquely to the median line, which is also brown; below it is somewhat lighter, and becomes slightly yellow, increasingly so in the female as pregnancy advances. The pulmonal sacs are always pale yellow, and involved in the fold (tramezzati dalla ripiegatura). Between these, and within the fold itself, the female sexual organ opens, consisting of a transverse opening invisible to the naked eye, but clearly seen on using a lens and removing the fold under which it is concealed, by means of the point of a scalpel or of a pin. The posterior extremity of the anus presents four spinnerets, of which the two upper are much the longer, and composed of four easily seen joints, the lower very short. The feet are moderate, and the longest are of the length of the entire body when this is fully developed (quando è perfettamente sviluppato); of these the fourth pair are about a third longer than the first, the third of about the same length as the second, which is the shortest of all. The tarsi of these are armed with two small curved claws, and the third and fourth joint with many long, delicate, straight, and mobile spines, which in the first pair become fewer as they approach the last joint. The eyes are arranged in three lines, as they are represented in C, Plate I., Fig. 3, and of these the two last of the posterior line are white and glistening, the others brown.

"Our _Mygale_ lives in tubular cavities, or burrows, which she excavates for herself in loose and friable soil, in walls made of volcanic earth, in shady places, and for the most part turned to the north or to the west, seldom to the south--hence cool and rather damp. The burrows do not exceed the length of a palm, eight lines at their widest part. For about the length of an inch the tube is funnel shaped, thence it continues of a nearly uniform magnitude. Its first direction is almost horizontal, then it rises continually, turning to the right or left, and sometimes makes zigzags. As the tubes are excavated in friable soil, she takes care to tapestry them inside with the same glutinous material of which the other races make their web, by means of which the burrows are made smooth on the inside, and to strengthen them in such a manner that even when the outer earthy part has become cracked, or been torn away by the action of the rain, they remain firm and fit to conceal their inhabitant. I have often found the tubes of web thus left exposed, as they are represented in Plate I., Fig. 4, situated in the cement of a wall, and among _Lycopodium denticulatum_, _Adiantum Capillus-Veneris_, _Marchantia polymorpha_, and other small plants. And it seems that the animal, perceiving the nature of the soil, takes care to reinforce the silken case, so much the more as she finds the earth less firm, and _vice versâ_. So that in burrows excavated in solid ground, with the exception of a little space close to the aperture, the nest is merely smoothed and daubed; while sometimes the spider constructs a tube so strong that it supports itself even when deprived of all the earth, the animal having had the foresight to attach it along the course of the clefts of the rock, or to the cement of the pieces of tufa in the wall, as represented in Plate I. They have often also a double aperture, and the upper portions of the burrows converging, meet and anastomose at about two inches distance. The aperture is closed by a little door or valve (_a_), which, having its hinge in the upper part and a little on one side, falls by its own weight, and fits itself exactly to the opening. The outer surface of the wicket is covered with earth, cemented by the glue of the spider, so that it is rendered imperceptible to common eyes, and the industrious little creature takes care to leave around the aperture a kind of rim, to which the door fitting closely, leaves no passage for any animal, nor does it show its edges. At the bottom of its tube the creature keeps her numerous offspring, and always stands herself as sentinel at the door, holding the wicket raised by means of the four anterior feet, and the palpi, curved extremities of which she inserts between the rim of the tube and of the door, as represented in _a' f_. Sometimes, however, they do not appear, but she leaves only the chink for observation, as one sees in _a_ of the same figure. Fig. 2, at _c_, represents the aperture of an abandoned burrow, and at _d_ the raised door of another burrow, with its almost funnel-shaped aperture. That which Sauvage, Olivier, and Latreille relate of her is not true--namely, that she remains at the bottom of the burrow, and runs to the door only when she sees it threatened, in order to keep the door firmly closed. On the contrary, always standing at the door as sentinel, she leaves it as soon as she thinks it in danger, so that it can be raised without the least effort: but if you hold it a little raised without making any sign of movement, she turns on her back, and comes out to draw it down with her feet, making all the efforts she can to conquer the obstacle. But if you take it away entirely, she turns down the edges to close the aperture as best she can, and that she does hurriedly, without waiting for night. The light seems to offend her so much that, if exposed to the full day, she remains so stupefied as to appear dead, nor does she move even if shaken; on the contrary, she constantly stops still and holds herself with her feet pressed against her body. At last, if very much disturbed, she runs quickly for some distance, till she finds a place in which to hide her head, and from thence she does not stir. I have observed that the burrows are always short when the aperture is small, and increase in length as they augment in diameter, which makes me conclude that it is not true that they begin their excavations from the base of the mother's tube, where I have never found any communication with others. This spider is found in the neighbourhood of Naples (ne' contorni della Capitale), on the Camaldoli, in the island of Ischia, where it lives near the sources of mineral waters, in Gaeta at the foot of the olive trees, among the stones in the ground, &c. &c.

"Observation. The difference which distinguishes our _Mygale_ from the _Sauvagesii_ consists, first, in the toothing of the mandibles, which is observable on one side only of the channel, and not on both; secondly, in the tarsi all equally armed with spines, and not only the four anterior ones; thirdly, in the colour of the thorax and the abdomen, which is not uniform as is usual in the _Sauvagesii_. Nevertheless, such differences might be in part climatic, which would cause our _Mygale_ to be considered as a mere variety of the same species, and the others might be the result of the different method of examining the parts, and of the goodness of the instruments."

At p. 19, in the _Fauna del Regno di Napoli_, M. Costa gives the following account of the nest of _Nemesia cellicola_, which he discovered above San Martino in September, 1833:--

"Vive entro la polvere arida, nelle cavità oscure delle muraglie, e propriamente nelle così dette _Saettiere_, ove, col glutine suo, si costruisce un tubo delicato e mobile, che ha cura di affidare nel suo origine a qualche corpo stabile nel fondo del muro, e che in terra nella polvere, aprendosi l'altro estremo sul piano inclinato dalla polvere stessa costituto."

This, with the exception of the words "e che in terra nella polvere," which are unintelligible to me as they stand, and appear to want a verb, may be translated as follows:--

"She lives in the dry dust, in the obscure crevices of walls, and especially in those which are called _Saettiere_ (loop-holed walls?), where she constructs a delicate and flexible tube with her viscid secretion, and which she takes care to fasten at its commencement to some solid body at the bottom of the wall, ... the other extremity opening on the inclined plane formed by the dust itself."

We may remark that there is here no mention of any door or concealment at the mouth of the tube, and in this and some other respects the nest of _Nemesia cellicola_ would appear to resemble the nest of _Atypus piceus_ from the neighbourhood of Paris. See above in the text, p. 78.

B.

_On the Habits of Cteniza Ariana._

The following is a free translation of an account read by M. Erber before the Botanico Zoological Association of Vienna,[98] of the very curious observations which he made on _Cteniza Ariana_ when travelling in the Grecian Archipelago.

[Footnote 98: Verhand. der k. k. zoologisch-botanischer Verein in Wien, vol. xviii. (1868), p. 905.]

"On my return voyage [from Rhodes], I stayed for a fortnight in the island of Tinos, and, among other things, I captured several specimens of the so-called trap-door spider (Deckelspinne) _Cteniza Ariana_, Walck., and with much trouble procured an entire tube and trap-door of this creature.... I am thus enabled to exhibit to this honourable assembly the complete nest of this creature, and the spider herself, with her eggs, preserved in alcohol, and can moreover add some few words as to her habits.

"It needs some practice, as the specimen before you shows, to enable one to discover the nest, as the door is always closed by day. I dug out several of these tubes, but failed to find either the remains of food or excrement. So there was nothing for it but to devote a couple of nights to watch these creatures. With this view I selected a place where many spiders had excavated their tunnels, and availed myself of a moonlight night for my observations.

"Shortly after nine o'clock the doors opened and the spiders came out, fastened back the trap-doors by means of threads to neighbouring blades of grass or little stones, then spun a snare about six inches long by half an inch high, and afterwards returned quietly to their holes.

"I had so chosen my position that I could see three of these spiders at the same time. I now captured a specimen and put it into spirits, and in a short time saw entangled in the net of one of the remaining spiders a _Pimelia_, and of the other a _Cephalostenus_, both rather hard-lived, night-flying beetles, which were seized by the spiders, and the latter, after sucking out the juices, carried the empty bodies to a distance of several feet from their holes. All these events happened in about three hours, after which time I allowed the two spiders to remain undisturbed, and returned to the house.

"Early next morning I revisited the spot, and then perceived that these two spiders had entirely removed the net which they made the preceding night, but the entrance to the nest of the spider which I had captured still remained open, and I could clearly trace the shape of its snare, on which the heavy morning's dew lay. The upper threads were isolated, but the snare became thicker as it approached the ground. I found that these snares had, strange to relate, been gathered up by the two other spiders, fastened on to the door, and smoothly spun over, and, on making a vertical section of the doors, which were nearly a quarter of an inch thick, I discovered that they were composed of several layers.

"In the nests of several females I found eggs at the bottom of the tube, not placed in cocoons, but attached by separate threads. The young spiders when hatched are turned out from the asylum of their mother's nest; and I found these creatures when scarcely two lines long already established in nests three inches deep, and furnished with perfect trap-doors, of which facts the specimens I now lay before you are the evidence."

C.

Species of Territelariæ, enumerated by Professor Ausserer,[99] belonging to Europe and the Mediterranean region, with synonyms, and two species which I have added in brackets:--

[Footnote 99: Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Arachniden-Familie der Territelariæ, in k. k. zool.-bot. Gesellschaft in Wien (1871), vol. xxi. pp. 117-224.]

_Atypus piceus_, Sulzer. (_A. Sulzeri_, Latr.) Holland, France, Switzerland, Germany, Northern Italy.

_A. Blackwallii_, Auss. England.

_A. Anachoreta_, L. Koch. Fiume.

_Idiops Syriacus_, Cambr. Beirût.

_Æpycephalus brevidens_, Doleschall. Sicily.

_Cteniza Sauvagei_, Rossi. (_Ct. fodiens_), Corsica, Pisa, Mentone, Ionian Islands.

_Ct. orientalis_, Auss. Brussa.

_Ct. ædificatoria_, Westw. (_Actinopus ædificatorius_, Westw.) Tangiers.

_Ct. algeriana_, Luc. Algiers.

_Cyrtocarenum Arianum_, Walck. (_Mygale (Cteniza) Ariana_, Walck.). Naxos, Tinos.

_C. tigrinum_, L. Koch. Syra.

_C. grajum_, C. Koch. Nauplia in the Morea.

_C. ionicum_, Saunders. Ionia.

_C. lapidarium_, Luc. Crete.

_Cyrtauchenius Walckenaerii_, Luc. Algiers.

_C. Doleschallii_, Auss. Sicily.

_C. similis_, L. Koch. Saragossa.

_C. obscurus_, Auss. Sicily.

_Nemesia cæmentaria_, Latr. S. France, Spain, Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Algiers.

_N. cæmentaria_, var. _germanica_, Auss. Wippach, near Görz in Trieste.

[_N. meridionalis_, Costa. Naples, Ischia, Sestri near Genoa, Mentone, and Cannes.]

[_N. Eleanora_. Mentone and Cannes.]

_N. cellicola_, Sav. et Aud. Rome, Sicily, and Egypt.

_N. maculatipes_, Doleschall. Sardinia.

_N. badia._, Auss. Corsica.

_N. manderstjernæ_, L. Koch. Nice.

_N. hispanica_, L. Koch. Madrid.

_N. macrocephala_, Auss. Palermo.

_Brachythele icterina_, C. Koch. Greece.

_B. incerta_, Auss. Brussa.

_Macrothele calpetana_, Walck. Southern Spain.

_M. luctuosa_, Luc. Southern Spain.

_Leptopelma transalpina_, Doleschall. Friuli.

_Ischnocolos triangulifer_, Doleschall. Sicily.

_I. holosericeus_, L. Koch. Spain.

_I. gracilis_, Auss. Cyprus.

_I. syriacus_, Auss. Syria.

_Chætopelma ægyptiaca_, Dol. Egypt.

D.

_Hints on Collecting Spiders._

It is very important to collect adult specimens of males and females, but the former, from their roaming habits, are often extremely difficult to find.

At night they may sometimes be taken by lamp-light near the nests of the females, and certain kinds are said to live with the female during the months of September and October. The females may usually be found in their nests during the daytime (always in Europe?).

Large spiders should be killed, or at least stupefied with chloroform, before being put into spirit of wine. It is convenient to place the specimens in glass test-tubes closed with corks, and filled with pure spirit of wine, as they may then be examined through the glass.

When specimens of more than one species are placed in the same tube or bottle, it is well to distinguish each by a number written in pencil on a small strip of card fastened round the body with a slip-noose of thread.

The patterns on the abdomen and cephalothorax of the spiders are seen very distinctly when the spiders are immersed in spirits of wine, and these frequently afford characters which aid in determining the species.

M. Thorell, in the introduction to his work _On European Spiders_,[100] gives a detailed account of a method by which specimens may be prepared for mounting in cabinets, by drying them within a glass tube held over a flame, but it would appear that, for purposes of study, specimens preserved in spirit of wine are far preferable.

[Footnote 100: Thorell (T.), On European Spiders, in Nova Acta Regiæ Societ. Scientiar. Upsaliensis, ser. 3, vol. viii. fasc. I. et II. (Upsala, 1871).]

It is very desirable to obtain characteristic portions of, or if possible entire nests, but where the tubes are long, this is extremely difficult to do satisfactorily.

Some nests, preserved in the British Museum, have been coated with thin glue, and this appears to be of some use in binding the parts together. I find that by stuffing the tube full of cotton-wool, before attempting to remove the earth, the nest may sometimes be obtained in tolerably good condition.

E.

_The Nest of the Tarantula (Lycosa Tarentula)._

As it is of some interest to compare the burrow of the Tarantula with the nest of its near allies the trap-door spiders, I give the following _résumé_ of M. Dufour's observations:[101]--

[Footnote 101: Quoted by M. Lucas, in his Histoire Nat. des Animaux Crustacés et Arachnides, p. 357.]

"_Lycosa Tarentula_ forms a cylindrical burrow in the earth, often more than a foot long, and about one inch in diameter. At about four or five inches below the surface the perpendicular tube is bent horizontally, and it is at this angle that the Tarantula watches for the approach of enemies or prey.

"The external orifice of the burrow of the Tarantula is ordinarily surmounted by a separately constructed tube, and which authors have not hitherto mentioned; this tube, a true piece of architecture, rises to about an inch above the surface of the ground, and is sometimes as much as two inches in diameter, being thus larger than the burrow itself. This tube is principally composed of fragments of wood fastened together with clayey earth, and so artistically disposed one above the other that they form a scaffolding having the shape of an upright column, of which the interior is a hollow cylinder."

M. Dufour observes, however, that the exterior tube was not found in all the nests. In every case the tube was lined with silk throughout its whole length.

F.

The following description is that given by Prof. Ausserer in his monograph of _Territelariæ_,[102] of a male trap-door spider which was found at Nice, and named by Herr L. Koch _Nemesia Manderstjernæ_. It is just possible, I think, that this male may in reality belong to _N. meridionalis_ [Costa-Cambr.], of which the female alone is at present known.[103] If this is the case, then the name _Manderstjernæ_ will have to be suppressed in favour of that of _meridionalis_. If not, we have yet to discover the female spider and nest of another species of _Nemesia_!

[Footnote 102: Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Arachniden-Familie der Territelariæ, in Verhand. der k. k. zool.-bot. Gesellschaft in Wien (1871), vol. xxi. p. 170.]

[Footnote 103: Mr. Pickard-Cambridge regards this suggestion (that _N. Manderstjernæ_ may be the male of _N. meridionalis_) not improbable.]

5. _Nemesia Manderstjernæ_, L. Koch.

♂ Die genaue Beschreibung dieser hübschen Art ihrem Autor, Herrn Dr. L. Koch überlassend, führen wir hier nur jene wesentlichen Unterscheidungsmerkmale an, welche diese Species von den verwandten auszeichnen.--Cephalothorax schön gerundet mit schmalem, mässig hohem Kopfe.--Augenhügel hoch, nach vorn und hinten steil abfallend.--Die vordere und hintere Augenreihe bilden 2 nahezu parallele Curven, mit der Concavität nach vorn. Vordere Mittelaugen stehen so hoch, dass eine Gerade von ihrer Basis zu den Seitenaugen gezogen etwas über denselben zu stehen käme, zugleich sind sie von einander um ihren Radius und kaum weiter von den vorderen Seitenaugen entfernt. Augen der vorderen Reihe fast doppelt so gross als die der hinteren.--Zähne des Rechens lang und spitz.--Palpen mässig lang, letztes und vorletztes Glied ähnlich bewaffnet wie bei _N. cellicola_.[104]--Bulbus birnförmig, mit etwas kurzer, dünner Spitze.--Alle Tarsen der Beine, ebenso Metatarsus I und II mit dünner Scopula, zugleich sind die Tarsen wehrlos.--Tibia I keilförmig verdickt, unten an der Spitze ein starker nach oben und innen gebogener, spitzer Zahn, vor demselben ein oben gerade abgestutzter Höcker.--Schenkel oben und innen mit dunkelm Längsstreifen.--Cephalothorax 6·5^{mm}.

[Footnote 104: Description of palpi of _N. cellicola_, p. 168: "Palpen kurz, stark. Femuralglied oben bestachelt; vorletztes Glied oben an der Spitze mit 4 starken, etwas kurzen Stacheln, auch das Endglied nach oben mit sehr kleinen Stacheln bewaffnet. Bulbus kurz birnförmig, in eine feine, mässiglange, fadendunne (vorn nicht gespaltene) Spitze auslaufend."]

Nizza.

Of this description the following is, I hope, a tolerably correct translation:--

_Nemesia Manderstjernæ_, L. Koch.

♂ Passing over the precise description of this pretty species by its author, Herr Dr. L. Koch, let us note here some of the essential characters which distinguish this species from its relations. _Cephalothorax_ fairly (schön) rounded, with small, moderately prominent head. Eye eminence (Augenhügel) prominent, steeply inclined in front and behind. The front and rear row of eyes form two nearly parallel curves with the concavity in front. The foremost central eyes stand so high that a line (eine Gerade) drawn from their base to the lateral eyes would pass just above them, although they are not separated from the lateral eyes by a distance greater than that of their own radius. Eyes of front row almost twice as large as those of hind row. Teeth of rake (Rechens) long and sharp. _Palpi_ moderately long, the last and penultimate joint armed as in _N. cellicola_.[105] Bulb pear-shaped, with a rather shorter, more slender point. All the tarsi of the legs, and even the metatarsi I and II, with a slender scopula, although the tarsi are unarmed. Tibia I enlarged into a wedge-shape, (having) beneath the apex a stout pointed tooth bent upwards and inwards, in front of which (is) a truncated prominence (ein oben gerade abgestutzter Höcker). Femur (Schenkel) (having) dusky longitudinal stripes above within.--Cephalothorax 6·5^{mm}.

[Footnote 105: Description of palpi of _N. cellicola_:--_Palpi_, short, strong. Femoral joint furnished with spines above; penultimate joint armed with four stout rather short spines above the apex, the terminal joint also having some very small spines. Bulb shortly pear-shaped, running out into a fine, moderately long point, which is slender as a thread, and not split in front.]

Nice.

G.

_On Nemesia meridionalis and N. Eleanora, Captive in Company with their Young._

I have tried the experiment of keeping specimens of _Nemesia meridionalis_ and _N. Eleanora_ captive in flower-pots, partly filled with earth and covered with gauze, but I have never been able to detect the least inclination on the part of either of these spiders to excavate a burrow in the earth.

Thinking that I might have better success if I were to place the mother spiders, together with their young, in captivity, I captured a female _N. meridionalis_ and _N. Eleanora_, each with its brood, and placed them on moist earth in flower-pots under gauze. The result, however, was that the young spiders concealed themselves in the crevices of the soil, while the mother spiders remained exposed.

The adult _N. meridionalis_ lived thus for twenty days (from the 7th to the 27th of November), capturing and killing flies with which I supplied her, but she then suddenly died.

After seventeen days' captivity the other species (_N. Eleanora_) began to cover a small surface of the gauze with a semi-transparent substance (which resembled varnish rather than silk), secreted from its spinners, and four days later it began to weave a cell; this cell took twelve days to complete, and finally assumed the shape of a rudely-formed figure of 8, with a circular aperture at either end, each of which was kept open during the construction of the cell, and then closed. The gauze itself, covered with silk, formed the ceiling of the cell, while the floor was made of silk attached to the earth, and the sides of strong and rather opaque silk.

This cell bore no resemblance to any portion of any trap-door nest that I have ever seen, and it is difficult to conceive how the idea of such a structure presented itself to the spider. Its outline indeed had some likeness to the general outline of the spider herself, one loop of the figure 8 being rather smaller than the other. The distance between the floor and the ceiling of this impromptu cell was a little over half an inch, its width varying from one inch in the broadest to eight lines in the narrowest part, while its length was an inch and a quarter.

It would appear that the object which the spider had in view was to construct a warm and secure retreat for the winter, and accordingly after having completed this chamber, she no longer made excursions to catch the flies with which I supplied her, but remained self-immured in her cell.[106]

[Footnote 106: My observations on the captive spider were still in progress at the time of going to print, so that the above notes must be considered as incomplete.]

It would be interesting to discover whether any of the spiders of this group (but which do not construct trap-door nests) pass the winter in similar structures.

H.

_On the Structure of Cork Doors._

In order to test my theory to the effect that the trap-door nests are enlarged from time to time, and that the numbers of layers of silk in an undisturbed cork door should represent the number of enlargements which the nest has undergone, I examined the doors of twenty-eight nests of the cork type (all I believe of _N. cæmentaria_), in order to prove whether as a rule the larger cork doors do contain more layers of silk than the small ones, as they should on this hypothesis.

This is, I think, fairly established by the following table:--

_Comparative Table._

One cork door measuring 1 line across contained 1 layer of silk.
Four " doors " 1-1/2 lines " 3 layers "
One " door " 1-1/2 " 2 "
One " door " 1-3/4 " 4 "
One " door " 2 " 5 "
Two " doors " 2-1/2 " 6 "
One " door " 2-1/2 " 5 "
One " door " 3 " 8 "
Two " doors " 3-1/2 " 5 "
One " door " 3-1/2 " 7 "
One " door " 4 " 7 "
Two " doors " 4-1/2 " 8 "
One " door " 4-1/2 " 7 "
Two " doors " 5 " 9 "
One " door " 5 " 5 "
One " door " 5 " 6 "
One " door " 5 " 13 "
One " door " 5-1/2 " 9 "
One " door " 5-1/2 " 10 "
One " door " 5-1/2 " 14 "
One " door " 6 " 12 "

The apparent exceptions to this rule, in which the larger doors have fewer layers than some of the smaller ones, may probably be accounted for in the following manner.

During the heavy rains and in times of drought flakes of earth often become detached from the sloping banks, and carry away the doors of such nests as are found in them.

This happens frequently, and the spiders hasten to repair the damage and spin new doors.

But I have found, on examining eight of these new doors, that, even in large nests,[107] they do not then contain more than three layers of silk; so that each time a nest of any size loses its door, the number of layers is greatly reduced.

[Footnote 107: Of the eight doors in question the smallest measured 3-1/2 lines across, and the largest 7 lines.]

In the case of six of these nests I had myself acted the part of the landslip and removed the existing door. These original and apparently undisturbed doors measured 3-1/2, 4, 5, 5, 5, and 5 lines across, and contained respectively 5, 7, 8, 13, 9 and 5 layers of silk; while of the equally large doors which replaced them five contained three layers of silk only, and the remaining nest but a single layer.

INDEX.