This morning the spider had left her cell, and was roaming about the pot when I wetted the tube, thus proving that she was in no way concerned with its movements, which were no doubt due to hygrometric action.
Between this time and February 25th, I constantly restored the tube to its shape by wetting it in the way above described, but on this day it remained very flaccid, and only expanded partially. For some days previous to this date, the spider had left the tube when it collapsed, and only returned to it again when it had resumed its shape. On the following day I found the entire silk tube and the cell again collapsed and lying flat upon the ground, and this time water failed to produce its previous effect.
The spider then became very restless and excited, and I observed that the door of one of the little nests constructed by one of her five offspring which had been imprisoned in the same pot with her, had been torn off, and thrown on one side, and there could be little doubt but that the mother had been guilty of this very un-maternal action. By the evening she had pulled up her collapsed tube from its attachment to the earth, and had coiled it in a confused heap. Seeing this, and fearing that, in her distress and excitement, she might do further damage to the young spiders, which had up to that time thriven well, I made a cylindrical hole for her in the earth, supposing that she would at once take possession of it. On the following morning, however, the mother spider had advanced some way in building another figure-of-8 cell, rising the shrivelled silk of her previous dwelling as a foundation.
In twenty-four hours this second cell was complete, and closely resembled the former one, save that the smaller end of the 8 was turned in the opposite direction, but, on examining it, I found to my surprise that it was empty! The spider had taken possession of the hole I had made for her, which she had at first refused to notice, and was busily employed in lining it with silk and furnishing it with a covering composed of silk with earth and fragments of moss woven into the surface. By mid-day the aperture was completely closed, but there was no moveable door. From this time (February 28) up to April 12, the spider lived in this hole, which she eventually furnished with a distinct wafer-door, and, as I found on opening the nest, with a typical lower door also. This latter was not neatly made, but still it possessed all features the essential which characterize these lower doors in the nests of N. Eleanora.
So this captive Nemesia Eleanora lived in a flower-pot in my bedroom for more than five months and a half, during which time she absolutely refused to burrow or to attempt any kind of excavation, but passed the greater part of that period on the surface of the earth in a silk tube ending in an oblong enlargement, utterly unlike her normal habitation. Finally, when I had done the digging for her, she furnished the cylindrical hole I had bored in the earth with a silk lining, and made it secure with her own two typical doors.
The figure-of-8 cell which she constructed at first, and subsequently modified until it became the oblong enlargement of the tube alluded to above, was totally unlike any form of trap-door spider's nest known to me; but in its ultimate shape (which resembled that of the glass part of a thermometer with an oblong bulb, save that it was curved and not straight), I think we may trace some resemblance to the silk tube which is made by Atypus, and of which a figure is given at A, [Plate XIII], p. 183; the mouth of the tube made by my captive was, however, open. It is curious, also, when we recall this resemblance, to note that Mr. Brown has recorded, in his observations alluded to above (p. 185), that the tube of one of the nests of Atypus, which he brought home in a collapsed state, showed a somewhat similar tendency to become distended. For, on opening the box in which they had been carried, he perceived a movement throughout the tube as if it were becoming inflated, and though this inflation appeared to subside shortly after, yet the following morning the tube had recovered its cylindrical shape. I am tempted to believe, though this is mere conjecture, that the box in which these tubes were put contained moisture, and that their apparent inflation was due to the same hygrometric action which, was displayed in the tube of N. Eleanora. I regretted that I was unable to continue my observations on this captive spider, as it would have been interesting to know how long she would have lived contentedly and in good health under the conditions described above, but I left Mentone at the end of April, and was unable to take her alive with me to England. When removed from her nest in the pot on April 12, she appeared in perfect condition, and I placed her in a hole which I made for her among some stones in a garden at the back of the house, hoping to find her again on my return to Mentone in the autumn; this hope was, however, not destined to be realized.
I shall, however, have occasion to speak again of the young captives of this species (N. Eleanora), in the concluding remarks which will follow these detailed accounts of the nests and their occupants, when the behaviour of captive trap-door spiders generally will be treated of.
The next type of trap-door nest is one to which I have found it difficult to assign a descriptive name, and I am compelled for the present to speak of it as the Hyères double-door branched wafer nest.
One of its most distinctive features is found in the shape of the lower door, fig. F 1, [Plate XIV], and figs. A 1, A 2, [Plate XVIII.], which may be said to be double, presenting two crowns, one of which fits into the main tube and the other into the branch, but I could not see my way to employing this character in naming the type. The nest is, however, quite distinct from all the others, and is inhabited by a new species of trap-door spider (N. congener, Camb.[142]). The characteristic portions of this nest are shown in [Plate XVIII], and fig. A 3, in the same Plate, represents its occupant.
[142] Mr. Pickard-Cambridge's description will be found at p. 292, below. In its characters this female spider (the male is unknown) most nearly resembles N. cæmentaria, but differs, among other points, in markings and in having one or more spines on the genual joint of leg, these spines being almost always absent in the same joint in cæmentaria. The nests of the two species are totally unlike.