Harvesting Ants and Trap-Door Spiders: Notes and Observations on Their Habits and DwellingsMoggridge, John Traherne
Science
Harvesting Ants and Trap-Door Spiders: Notes and Observations on Their Habits and Dwellings
Moggridge, John Traherne
Ants; Trap-door spiders
On the other hand, in the reverse case, where the structure of the
same joint is very similar, the nests may be wholly unlike, as in
_Nemesia Eleanora_, Plate XII., p. 106, and _N. cæmentaria_, Plate
VIII., where the nest of the former is of the double-door unbranched
type, and that of the latter of the single-door cork type.
It is probable however that a fuller and closer comparison of, and a
more exact acquaintance with the several parts and their functions
might show us that all spiders which spin similar webs are furnished
with equivalent instruments, so that what one leg lacks another may
possess in some shape or another; brushes of stiff hairs in one
place, compensating for a toothed claw, or for a row of moveable
spines in another.[59]
[Footnote 59: The claws are probably of first-rate importance in this
respect and should be most carefully studied. M. Lucas has stated
that the claws of _Mygale Blondii_, and _M. nigra_ from Algiers, and
of _M. nigra_ and _M. avicularia_ from Brazil, are retractile like
those of a cat! Unfortunately the dwellings of these spiders have
not been described. See Lucas (H.) in Rev. et Mag. de Zoologie, sér.
2, tom. ix. 1857, p. 587, and Ann. de la Soc. Entom. de France, ser.
3, tom. v. p. cxx., and vi. p. clxxi. Another curious point in which
spiders differ is the presence or absence of viscidity in the hairs
which clothe their feet and palpi. Mr. Blackwall states (Spiders of
Great Britain and Ireland, vol. i. p. 13), that by far the greater
number of the sub-order _Territelariæ_, or _Mygalidæ_ as he terms
them, "have the inferior surface of their biungulate tarsi, and of
the digital joint of their pediform palpi, in the females, densely
clothed with compound, hair-like papillæ, constituting an apparatus
which, by the emission of a viscous secretion, enables them to
traverse the perpendicular surfaces of dry, highly polished bodies;
others have three pairs of spinners and are destitute of hair-like
papillæ on the legs and palpi."
The four species of trap-door spider on the Riviera, here described,
appear to form exceptions to this rule, however, for they all
remained helpless prisoners when placed in a glass tumbler, though
struggling vigorously for freedom.
When, however relying on this experience, I placed a number of
smaller spiders of different kinds in glasses for examination some
walked straight out without any difficulty, while others were unable
to climb up the sides.]
It would be interesting, from this point of view, to draw all the
parts which may be supposed to aid in the act of weaving, and so to
contrast the corresponding limbs of different spiders, the nests of
which are known, that one might see at a glance in what they differed
and agreed. I have done this for the falces and the last joint of
the foremost right foot of the four spiders figured in Plates VII.,
VIII., IX., and XII., but to make the case complete all the limbs
should be represented in the same way.
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