Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 3 (1899).djvu/564

quote here all the observations made by competent and veracious authorities as to the beautiful adaptations effected by these Spiders, by which the lid or door of their burrows is made to perfectly assimilate with the surrounding surface. Gillies, describing the habits of a New Zealand species, writes:—"The evidences of thought, ingenuity, and reason are displayed in the selection of the particular materials used in special places; in the calculation of the probabilities of certain contingencies happening; and in the apparently careless arrangement of both living and dead matter, so as to make what is in reality the highest art appear to be the result of natural and ordinary circumstances." In some cases there is "a plant of green grass.... planted artificially, and growing on the lid." In other cases "you will find clay on the outside of the lid, plastered and smooth, or possibly with an imitation crack, introduced apparently at random." In others, again, "the skilful artist brings to his aid all the taste and knowledge of the practical gardener—selects plants suited for his purpose, brings them from a distance, and actually transplants them to the top of his trap-door with astonishingly natural variety and arrangement"; or "you will find mosses of various hues and colours growing green, and sometimes brown and dead, upon the lid"; or sometimes "this tiny pasture is brilliantly ornamented with parti-coloured patches of lichens," or "sprigs of lycopods, ferns or heaths, veronicas, and whiteberry plants are introduced to correspond with the bolder herbage around"; or, "if the common white tussock is the prevailing vegetation in the locality, ... the dead bits (of that kind) of grass are woven adroitly into the trap-door or round its mouth, so as to deceive the most practised eye," &c.^[1] Moggridge found a nest in a plant which had been brought to him which was quite covered on the surface with moss, and the moss grew on the surface of the door itself, and looked exactly like that growing all round.^[2] Livingstone describes a nest of which "the outside looks exactly like the surrounding surface of the ground, so that when the door is shut it is impossible to find the nest. The hole can therefore only be seen when the inhabitant has gone out and

1. Quoted by W. Lauder Lindsay, 'Mind in the Lower Animals,' vol. i. p. 528.
2. 'Harvesting Ants and Trap-door Spiders,' p. 97.