It will, perhaps, have been observed that I have throughout spoken of the female spider only, scarcely any allusion having been made to the male. The truth is that, though I have carefully searched for them, I have never been able to secure more than a single male spider.[77] During the winter, spring, and late autumn (October) the female appears to live solitary, in the daytime at least, and the male probably hides in the crevices of old walls and in similar places. I have diligently turned over piles of stone, greatly to the annoyance of many little scorpions, but have never secured, or even seen, another male spider. This is the more to be regretted as the species of trap-door spider are much better characterized in the male than in the female sex, the bulb-like enlargement which is found at the end of the palpi in the former taking on a great variety of forms, each of which is distinctive.
[77] Three days before sending this MS. to print, and long after the plates had been completed, I captured on Oct. 23rd one male of Nemesia Eleanora. He lay crouched in a crevice in a mossy bank, and had, perhaps, been driven out of some deeper hiding-place by the heavy rains.
M. de Walckenaer[78] says:—"C'est toujours pendant la nuit que ces aranéides travaillent à leurs habitations et courent après leur proie. C'est en Août que la Mygale maçonne (Nemesia—or Mygale—cæmentaria) atteint toute sa grosseur.... En Septembre elle devient mère et méchante en même temps ... les mouches, les moucherons, les petits vers lui servent de pâture; elle les prend dans les filets qu'elle étend et attache sur les inégalités des terres voisines de sa demeure. Elle vit après la ponte en société avec son mâle. Dorthès a vu plusieurs fois, dans la même habitation, le mâle et la femelle avec une trentaine de petits."
[78] Les Aranéides de France, p. 4.
Any one, therefore, who has an opportunity of examining the nests during the early autumn, might perhaps, discover the happy families spoken of by M. Dorthès, but which it has never been my good fortune to see. It is not known positively whether the male spider ever assists in the construction of the nest, but, as we know that the female is able to make it without his aid, there seems no reason to suppose that he does.
I have seen the female Nemesia meridionalis construct a trap-door in captivity, after having been placed on a flower-pot full of earth in which I had made a cylindrical hole.[79] She quickly disappeared into this hole, and, during the night following the day of her capture, she made a thin web over the aperture, into which she wove any materials which came to hand. The trap-door at this stage resembled a rudely constructed, horizontal, geometrical web, attached by two or three threads to the earth at the mouth of the hole, while in this web were caught the bits of earth, roots, moss, leaves &c. which the spider had thrown into it from above. After the second night the door appeared nearly of the normal texture and thickness, but in no case would it open completely, and it seemed that the spider was too much disgusted with her quarters to think it worth while to make a perfect door. I believe that when a door is finished the few threads which served as supports and connected it with the earth on either side of the hinge are severed, and this is borne out by the following instance. While I was at work one evening drawing the spider's nest concealed in the plant of ceterach fern ([Plate XI.], fig. A, p. 105) which I had dug out for the purpose, I detected something moving at the mouth of a tiny hole [just large enough to admit a crowquill pen] in the mass of earth on the opposite side of the fern, to that in which the large trap-door lay.
[79] An account of further experiments with captive spiders will be found in [Appendix G].
The lamp-light fell full upon it, and I soon saw that the moving object was a very small spider, not bigger than that drawn at B 2 in [Plate IX.], which was at work in the mouth of its tube. Whether I had, in removing this mass of earth, destroyed the door I cannot say, but it is certain that the opening of the tube was completely uncovered, and it soon became apparent that the little spider was intent upon remedying this deficiency. After a few threads had been spun from side to side of the tube I watched the spider make one or two hasty sorties, apparently spinning all the while, and finally I saw her gather up an armful, as it were, of earth and lay this on the web. After this the occupant of the tube was concealed, but I could see from the movement of the particles of earth that they were being consolidated, and that the weaving of the under surface of the door was being completed. Next morning I was able to lift up the door, which had the form of a small cup of silk, in which the earth lay. It was then soft and pliant, but in ten days time it had hardened and become a very fair specimen of a minute cork door (see figs. A 1, A 2, of [Plate XI.]).
On one occasion a captive Nemesia meridionalis employed some pieces of scarlet braid which I had purposely strewed, along with bits of moss and fragments of leaves, in a circle round the opening of, and about two inches away from, the hole.
It is probable that these spiders have in times past learned by experience that they cannot do better than take such materials as come to hand, as these will ordinarily serve for the concealment of their door.