Seeing this anxiety on the part of the spider for concealment, it came into my mind that, perhaps, if she were placed on the surface of a pot full of garden mould she might excavate a tunnel in order to hide herself from view. This I accordingly did in the evening of November 15, and on the following morning I was delighted to find that she had commenced to dig and was still at work.
In little more than an hour's time the hollow had become about the size of half a walnut, and resembled in its nearly semi-circular outline and size the surface of the door of her own nest. I was greatly pleased to be able to watch the creature at the work of excavation, a sight which I believe no naturalist has ever had before.
The legs took no part in the digging, and the palpi were but little used, the mandibles and their fangs being the implements chiefly employed. As soon as a little earth had been loosened and gathered up, the spider walked up to the edge of her excavation and deposited there her mouthful of particles of earth, separating and working the mandibles up and down in the effort to part with the pellet, which had been carried between the fangs and the mouth-organs. Each pellet was very small, and the operation appeared to be excessively tedious and laborious. I had expected to see the spider scrape out large quantities of earth at a time, and either drag it backwards or kick it out behind her as a terrier does when working at a rabbit-burrow; but no, every little pellet removed was carried forwards, and deposited separately on the "tip."
On the two following days, the 17th and 18th November, the spider remained almost inactive, and brooded over the cavity she had made, and which still remained too shallow to conceal or even contain her. At 4 P.M. on the latter day I made a hole for her in the earth, and, after some indecision, she took possession of it. Next day, however, finding that she remained motionless in the hole which I had made, and displayed no apparent intention of either lining it with silk or furnishing it with a door, I replaced her in her own nest.
Within a few days after this date I found her dead at the bottom of her tube, and at first I was inclined to fear that the treatment to which she had lately been subjected might have caused her end. When, however, I detected the brown spot on the side of the abdomen, described above, and which so strongly recalled the marks frequently observable in caterpillars attacked by ichneumons, I came to the conclusion that she had really died from the internal injuries caused by the gnawing of these cruel parasites; and that the eggs, laid long before by one of these insects, had been hatched within her body and developed into larvæ, which, living upon her tissues, had at length destroyed some vital part. It is surprising that a creature, carrying within itself such a fatal brood, should not only live, but be capable of undergoing such adventures and misadventures as this travelled spider endured with seeming indifference; but similar facts are familiar to all those who have attended to the rearing of caterpillars, and the frequent disappointment caused by the death of apparently sound specimens which have been attacked in this way is but too well known.
It would appear that Cteniza Californica is peculiarly amenable to captivity, and indeed to captivity of the strictest kind.
My specimen lived during all the time she was in my possession in a cocoatina tin, a cylindrical box 41/2 in. deep and 23/4 in. in diameter, which always stood among the books and papers on my writing-table. It is probable that those trap-door spiders which inhabit nests with short tubes, and which therefore can be transported nest and all, would be less disconcerted by imprisonment than is the case with other kinds living at the bottom of a long burrow which it is almost impossible to carry away entire. This is borne out by what has been related (Ants and Spiders, p. 122) of the habits of Cteniza ionica in captivity, which not only endured to have its nest set upside down in a flower-pot, but actually furnished the inverted base of the tube with a door appropriate to its new position.
Canon Tristram (the well-known author and naturalist) was so kind as to send me two trap-door nests from Palestine for inspection; these were small cork nests, the doors of which resembled those of the Mentonese Cteniza (Ct. Moggridgii), but the tubes were exceedingly short, and that of the more perfect specimen, as I gather from Canon Tristram, measured only two inches and an eighth in length when entire.
The nests of Cteniza ionica are but little longer, and that of the Mentonese Cteniza, though never so shallow as these, are far less deep than those of Nemesia cæmentaria, the builder of the typical cork nest.
And now we will leave the nests of the cork type and their inhabitants, and turn to the more intricate group of nests belonging to the wafer type. Following the order indicated in the diagrams, we will begin with the simplest type of all, fig. C, and afterwards take the remaining types one after the other, advancing until we reach the most complex type, G. The nest represented diagrammatically at fig. C, in [Plate XIV], is shown of the natural size in [Plate XVI.], with the spider (Nemesia Simoni, Camb.) which constructs it (fig. A 1).