The upstroke of the T is however, very short, and one of the arms is longer than the other, and curved downwards at its extremity. This is, as far as I know, the first recorded example of a wafer-nest from the Antipodes, and it may be regarded as one of the first fruits of a harvest which lies ready for the reaping of any naturalist resident in those parts. Hitherto the only nests which I have seen or heard of from Australia were of the cork type (Ants and Spiders, p. 132).
Next in order to the single-door branched wafer comes the double-door unbranched wafer type, which is the simplest of all the nests possessing two doors. This habitation, the work of N. Eleanora, has been already described (Ants and Spiders, p. 106), and I have not much to add to the account there given.
Perhaps some of my readers may remember that, while I was actually engaged on the proofs of Ants and Spiders I had one of these Eleanora spiders in captivity, and that I gave an account (p. 148) of her behaviour up to the latest moment possible. She had been captured on October 23, 1872, and placed, together with five young ones found with her in the nest, on the surface of some earth in a medium-sized flower-pot covered over with gauze. The young ones soon made nests for themselves in the earth, each furnished with its little door, but the mother roamed about on the surface of the soil, and it was not until she had been twenty-one days in captivity that she commenced spinning a silk cell.
This cell in twelve days' time presented the form of a rude figure of 8, and had an aperture at either end; it was just large enough to contain the spider when the legs were extended; its upper surface was attached to the gauze covering of the pot, and its lower to the earth. It was at this stage that the record was broken off, and I will now relate the remainder of the history.
Four days before the cell was commenced, the spider had covered the under surface of the gauze with a semi-transparent film of a substance resembling varnish, which formed a band about three inches long by half an inch wide, close to where the rim of the flower-pot threw the most shade. It was at one extremity of this band that the silk-cell was formed, but it is important to note that this band of varnish was longer than the cell, which only measured an inch and a quarter from end to end, for we shall see that the layer of varnish was apparently laid with a view to further operations.
In four days after the completion of the cell its form was modified, and, during the next ten days (up to December 21st), the spider gradually thickened the walls, and made the form of the cell more and more cylindrical, sometimes closing and at other times opening the extremities.
Between December 14th and 25th, she lengthened out the cell by spinning a cylindrical silk tube in prolongation of one end, and this tube followed the course of the band of varnish, the whole measuring three-and-a-half inches in length by about half an inch in diameter.
It would appear therefore from the correspondence in length between the band of varnish and this silk tube, that she had contemplated the construction of the latter when she first commenced her work on November 3rd.
On January 19th the silk tube parted from the gauze, leaving only the enlarged end which formed the cell still adhering to it. On the following day I observed the very curious fact that when I sprinkled the nest with water, as it was my custom to do every morning, the tube, which had become somewhat flaccid since it had lost its attachment to the gauze, gradually recovered its perfect shape. This was repeated for eleven days, until on the morning of the twelfth day (January 31st), finding the tube completely collapsed, instead of merely sprinkling water over it, I drew a large camel-hair brush loaded with water along its whole length, when the tube started up, and almost instantaneously regained its cylindrical form.