their nests, and their behaviour by night appeared to be the same as by day, only that they were bolder and more on the alert.
The spiders in the cork nests (N. Moggridgii) resisted our attempts to raise their doors just as rigorously as in the daytime.
All the spiders which I have kept in captivity have shown themselves more active at night than during the day, and I imagine that experience has taught them that fewer of their enemies are then abroad, while ants, beetles, wood-lice, and other creatures upon which they prey are quite as nocturnal as themselves.
I brought back to England some young cork and wafer spiders from Hyères, and one adult cork (N. Moggridgii). The latter was placed in a small tin box, with moss and a little earth at the bottom, on the evening of May the 10th, 1873, and by next morning she had made a silk tube through the moss, carrying up earth from below for the purpose of strengthening its walls on the outside. On the 13th of May the tube was furnished with a perfect door.
I hoped that this spider might lay eggs in her prison,[1] and therefore broke up her nest from time to time after my return to London in order to search for them. Between the 27th of May (when her nest had been transferred into a box of earth) and the 6th of October I destroyed her dwelling four times, and after each demolition she furnished the cylindrical hole which I bored for her with a lid, having thus made five doors since her capture. I got no eggs
- ↑ Strange to say, though I have opened so many nests at different seasons of the year, and found young apparently quite recently hatched, I have never been able to find the eggs of a trap-door spider.
