The ants die very quickly in pure spirit of wine, and they can afterwards, even after the lapse of months or more, be pinned out in the cabinet after having been washed in warm water. In examining the mouth organs of an ant in order to determine by the aid of books to what genus it belongs, it is best to relax the parts by first washing away the spirit of wine, and then leaving the specimen for a day or more in a stopper bottle partly filled with finely chopped laurel leaves. It is probable that a drop or two of prussic acid on a bit of sponge might act as effectually in rendering the tissues pliable. A compound microscope is necessary for the final examination of the joints of the labial and maxillary palpi (see Fig. D 2, Plate I., p. 21); but the neuration of the wing (D 1, Plate I.), another very important character, is easily detected with a good pocket-lens. The works which may most usefully be consulted are, for France, M. Nylander's _Formicides de France et d'Algérie_, published in vol. v. of the fourth series of the Zoological Division of the _Annales des Sciences Naturelles_; for England, Mr. F. Smith's _Catalogue of British Fossorial Hymenoptera_ (1856); and for a more general review of the species in the world at large, Mr. F. Smith's _Catalogue of Hymenopterous Insects in the Collection of the British Museum_, Part vi., _Formicidæ_ (1858), and M. Mayr's _Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Ameisen_, published in the _Verhandlungen des Zoologisch-botanischen Vereines in Wien_, iii. 1853. _Abhandlungen_ (p. 101). PART II. TRAP-DOOR SPIDERS. PART II. TRAP-DOOR SPIDERS. It is now one hundred and sixteen years since Patrick Browne gave an illustration in his _Civil and Natural History of Jamaica_[43] of the nest of a trap-door spider, the first record of the kind with which I am acquainted. Seven years later the careful observations of the Abbé Sauvages appeared,[44] in which he gave a very good description of the nests of the "araignée maçonne" (_Nemesia cæmentaria_), which he discovered near Montpellier, likening them to little rabbit burrows lined with silk and closed by a tightly-fitting moveable door. In 1778 and 1794 Rossi[45] published an interesting account of the nest and habits of a trap-door spider which he had observed in Corsica and near Pisa; and from that time up to the present day the curious dwellings of these creatures, many species of which have been discovered in warm climates, have continued to attract the attention of naturalists. [Footnote 43: P. 420, tab. 44, fig. 3 a. This work was published in London in 1756.] [Footnote 44: In Histoire de l'Acad. Royale des Sciences (Paris 1763), p. 26-30.] [Footnote 45: Rossi (P.), Osservazione Insettologische (Memorie di Matematica e Fisica della Società Italiana, vol. iv. (1778), and Fauna Etrusca, vol. ii. (1794)).]