When I placed living insects, such as grasshoppers, for example, within the nest over-night, she would often allow them to remain there unharmed, so that I found them ready to escape on opening the door the following morning.
I never saw her leave the nest of her own free will, and when I made her come out and set her to run in the garden, she began at once to seek for a place to hide in, hobbling along in an ungainly way and at a slow pace.
She must, however, have left the nest on more than one occasion, unseen by me, for she deposited several clusters of eggs at various times upon the under-surface of the gauze net which was fastened over the mouth of the box in which she was imprisoned.
The first of these groups of eggs was laid during the night between the 12th and 13th of July, and formed a raspberry-shaped cluster attached to the gauze.
I have represented this cluster of the natural size at fig. B, 6, and magnified at fig. B, 7, on [Plate XV], only in an inverted position, for they really hung downwards from the under side of the net.
These eggs were greyish white or pale brown, and varied in shape from globose to oblong.
All were very small, the largest only measuring 1/2 line in its greatest length, but it is doubtful whether any of these eggs were fertile, and, though they appeared full and plump, many presented an irregular and fissured surface.
A fortnight later (July 27) another cluster of eggs was laid, and this time between the hours of five and eight P.M. When the lamp was brought in at the latter hour, I perceived what I took to be a drop of water hanging from the gauze cover above and rather in front of the spider's door, the very position occupied by the cluster of eggs previously described. On closer inspection this proved to be a drop of a pellucid colourless liquid, in which some thirty eggs floated. One egg was laid on the gauze at some distance from the main group, and several were also attached to the inside of the tin box.
At midnight I found that the drop had coagulated and contracted, and by the following morning the mass was quite dry and resembled the former group, only that it was not quite so convex.
Some of the eggs forming this cluster were much larger than any in the preceding one, and one measured as much as a line in length by half a line in breadth. This group is shown magnified at fig. B, 8, [Plate XV], and some of the separate eggs more highly magnified at fig. B, 9.