Mr. S. S. Saunders tried to see trap-door spiders make their nests. When the earth was dry, they would do nothing; but, after watering it, they several times dug new holes, but always in the night.
The food of the European trap-door spiders consists largely of ants and other wingless insects, and they have been known to eat earthworms and caterpillars. Mr. Moggridge has often seen them, even in the daytime, open their doors a little, and snatch at passing insects, sometimes taking hold of one too large to draw into the tube. One time he and some friends marked some holes, and went and watched them in the night. The doors were slightly open, and some of the spiders’ legs thrust out over the rim of the hole. He held a beetle near one of the spiders; and she reached the front part of her body out of the tube, pushing the door wide open, seized the beetle, and backed quickly into the tube again, the door closing by its own weight. Shortly after, she opened it again, and put the beetle out alive and unhurt, probably because it was too hard to eat. He next drove a sow-bug near another hole; and the spider came out and snatched it in the same way, and kept it. None of the spiders came entirely out of their holes, and they were only a little more active than in the daytime.
Erber, in the Island of Tinos, noticed a place where several trap-door nests were near each other, and spent a moonlight night watching them. Soon after nine o’clock some of the spiders came out, fastened back their doors, and each spun a web, about six inches long and an inch high, among the grass near her hole, and went back into the tube. In course of time beetles were caught in the webs, and eaten by the spiders, and the hard parts carried several feet from the nest. The next morning the webs had been cleared away, and the doors of the tubes closed, leaving no traces of the night’s work.
SILK TUBES AND NESTS.
Several species of Theridion and Epeira make tents near their webs, under which they hang when at rest, and in which some species make their cocoons, and lay their eggs. The tents are usually covered outside with leaves drawn together, with sticks or bud-scales collected near by, or with earth and stones brought up from the ground below.
Some spiders living on plants make flat tubes, in which they wait for insects, and also hide while moulting, or laying eggs. Others make, especially about the breeding-time, bags of silk on plants, or under stones, in which the egg-cocoons are finally spun.
Fig. 23.
Dolomedes makes among grass and shrubs, in meadows, a great nest, four or five inches in diameter, [Fig. 23], in which is the egg-cocoon. The young hatch and ramble about in this nest for some time. The spider remains near, usually holding on under the nest.