It is sad to have to relate that such young spiders as did not emerge from the web within a reasonable time were devoured by their unnatural parent. It sometimes happened that a change of weather rendered it unsuitable for the departure of the young, and in this case the mother closed up the exit-hole, and retired to feed upon her offspring! Thus, though there were as many as a hundred and forty in a brood, a good many perished at the outset, and the ants in the surrounding soil accounted for some of the rest. The Atypidae form a small outlying group of the Theraphosid spiders and are able to live in colder regions than most of their relatives. The great bulk of the division belong to the family Aviculariidae. Some of the Aviculariidae are not unlike Agelena in their mode of life, spinning a dense sheet-web terminating in a tube, and entrapping their prey. Far the greater number, however, as far as their habits are known at all, are earth dwellers, either inhabiting more or less complex burrows of their own, or sheltering under stones or in chance cavities by day and emerging at night to seek food in the immediate neighbourhood of their hiding-places. Some of them are quite small, but the majority are large robust spiders, of formidable appearance. The largest known spider, _Theraphosa leblondi_, is found in South America, and its body measures more than three and a half inches in length. Few spiders have attracted more attention than the fabricators of the curious “trap-door” nests, which are common in the Riviera, and indeed in all the countries bordering the Mediterranean. But abundant though they are, they are extremely difficult to find, and it is generally only by chance that their existence is detected. The Tarantula occasionally closes the mouth of her tunnel with a sheet of silk in which are encrusted the _débris_ of insects or particles of soil. She does this at the time when she is spinning her cocoon and any intrusion is particularly inopportune, but she does it also on other occasions which are not so easily accounted for. A reason which would naturally occur to us would be the exclusion of excessive rain or excessive sunshine, but the facts, unfortunately, do not accord with this explanation.