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Show 40 REV. O. P. CAMBRIDGE ON N E W ARANEIDEA. [Feb. 5, " The spiders are occasionally found, even in the daytime, watching at the mouths of their holes, but they prey on insects, I suspect, chiefly at night. At least a few burrows which I marked and visited about 10 P.M. had, in nearly every instance, their tenants sitting at the mouth, with the door more or less open, apparently on the watch for unwary insects passing by. In one case the door was elevated about 60°, the others not so much. When disturbed in her watch the spider slips quickly down the hole, and the door closes after her. If the door is now attempted to be lifted by the point of a penknife, the spider will hold it down with very considerable force, and can be plainly felt struggling to prevent its forcible opening. If the spider is not at the mouth of her hole, it is easy to ascertain if she is at home by scratching the outside of the door, when, if present, she will always rush up the burrow, and try to the best of her ability to hold down the door. The doors are all constructed on the same general plan, but they vary slightly in size and thickness. The following are the mean dimensions of five doors taken at random, the measurements, as before, being given in eighths of an inch and decimal parts thereof: - " Breadth of hinge-joint 5*12 Thickness of door at the forward end 2*04 Transverse diameter of door 5*12 Diameter of door from hinge to forward end 5*14 " We may thus say that an average door is a square of five eighths of an inch, and with a thickness at its forward or rounded end of a quarter of an inch. The thickness at the hinge-end is about one sixteenth of an inch, rather less if anything. " The length of the burrow from the mouth to the bottom, may be taken as seven inches. I measured the burrows accurately, "the longest was 7f inches, and the shortest was 6-j inches; the mean of the ten holes was 6f- inches. The burrows are cylindrical, and usually nearly straight, with a slight incline from the vertical towards the side on which the hinge is placed. They are lined throughout, the lining being thicker near the mouth and at the bottom, the two places where, I suppose, the spider usually sits. The diameter of the burrow remains nearly uniform throughout, at five eighths of an inch, with a very slight enlargement at the bottom. I have never found a burrow with an elbow or decided turn in it, or with a branch. The burrow is always, so far as my experience goes, a simple and nearly straight hole." "Pyawbwe, Upper Burmah, "January 7, 1888." The planting (as it were) of the lids of the nests with lichens causing them to resemble most exactly the surrounding surface is similar to that observed by the late Mr. Moggridge in respect of the Nemesias of the Riviera, and is indeed a very remarkable habit • the edges of the door are in the case of the present species furnished also with bits of grass resembling those growing around the nests |