| OCR Text |
Show 748 MR. F. O. PICKARD CAMBRIDGE ON [June 16, hung by a tuft or two of hairy campos-grass or arched over behind with a few dry leaves, the first two pairs of legs, pedipalps, and mandibles alone visible; in colour closely similar to the surrounding sand. A footfall, or a shadow, and they would vanish. What their food may be I cannot say, for no debris was ever to be found in the burrow. Do they wait for it to come within reach, or do they go and seek it ? I think the former. On several occasions, having sat up all night and now and again, at intervals of an hour, been the round of the burrows, each tenant was always found in exactly the same position; nor did I ever find one running about at night over the campos or in the forest. They may possibly, however, dash out a few feet and seize their prey when it passes, but I do not think they actually go in search of it. What the males do with themselves I am utterly unable to say, for though I watched and searched and waited many times at night and dug out numerous burrows, yet on no occasion did I find a male within, nor find one, as I fully expected to do, running over the sand outside. Pemales were taken in all stages of development, though it is quite possible I was too late for the male sex. In spinning the trumpet-shaped mouth to the burrow, the Spider takes up a position with the abdomen and hind legs only appearing from the burrows, and then by rubbing the spinners backwards and forwards covers the ground round the entrance with fine white silk. The large white cocoon, formed of a loose bag of silk, containing from 80-100 eggs, lies loose in the slightly enlarged end of the burrow. When the young are first hatched, they nourish themselves on the moist envelopes of the eggs, whence they have just emerged. Later they may be found crowding the entrance of the den or below with their mother. Contrary to one's expectation, the temperament of these spiders appears to be gentle ; though raising themselves on the hind legs and striking with the mandibles when irritated, yet there is no inclination to initiate an attack. Neither in confinement, though starving for want of food, since they would eat neither worms, caterpillars, crickets, cockroaches, moths, nor millipedes, did they show any inclination to attack each other nor the young spiders which wTere with them. Water they drank eagerly enough. Nothing could be externally more unlike than the Spiders I have included in this genus and those usually included in the genera Avicularia and Taplnauchenlus. The latter are much more hairy and the first pair of legs are equal to or less than the fourth pair. In the former the legs are not clothed with long hairs, and the first pair are longer than the fourth. The coxa?, femora, and patella, too, of the first two pairs of legs are very stout, while those of the third and fourth pairs are more slender, especially the fourth. In Avicularia and Taplnauchenlus the tarsi and protarsi of all four pairs are broad and spatuliform; in Santaremia those of the third pair are much less so than those of the first |
