Page:Harvesting ants and trap-door spiders. Notes and observations on their habits and dwellings (IA harvestingantstr00mogg).pdf/175

This page needs to be proofread.

and the adjacent islands, Trieste, South France, Spain, Morocco, New Granada, and Australia; while the single-door wafer nest is only known at present in the West India islands;[1] the branched double-door nest at Mentone, Cannes, and Pegli near Genoa, and [doubtfully] near Naples and in Ischia; and the unbranched double-door type at Mentone and Cannes alone. It is quite probable that these three latter forms of nest will some day be found to have a much wider range than that assigned to them here, but I can scarcely think it likely that they will ever be shown to claim the world-wide distribution of the cork type. Supposing that these nests are eventually discovered in many widely distant localities, a very interesting question will arise as to the specific characters of the spiders which inhabit and construct them. Shall we then find, for example, that nests of the unbranched double-door type are not tenanted and fabricated by Nemesia Eleanora alone, as we have hitherto found to be the case, but by many other distinct species also, each in its peculiar district?

That is to say, will the type of nest remain the same while the occupants vary, as in the cork nests?

If, on the other hand, we learn that these three types, the single-door wafer, the branched and unbranched double-door nests, are very local, we shall be led to inquire into the probable causes of this limitation.

But we must study much more closely the habits of

  1. There is a nest exhibited in the Museum collection at the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, marked "Amérique du Sud," which is perhaps of this type.