A fortnight later (July 27) another cluster of eggs was laid, and this time between the hours of five and eight P.M. When the lamp was brought in at the latter hour, I perceived what I took to be a drop of water hanging from the gauze cover above and rather in front of the spider's door, the very position occupied by the cluster of eggs previously described. On closer inspection this proved to be a drop of a pellucid colourless liquid, in which some thirty eggs floated. One egg was laid on the gauze at some distance from the main group, and several were also attached to the inside of the tin box. At midnight I found that the drop had coagulated and contracted, and by the following morning the mass was quite dry and resembled the former group, only that it was not quite so convex. Some of the eggs forming this cluster were much larger than any in the preceding one, and one measured as much as a line in length by half a line in breadth. This group is shown magnified at fig. B, 8, Plate XV., and some of the separate eggs more highly magnified at fig. B, 9. Between this date and the end of November when the spider died, eggs were laid on seven distinct occasions--viz., on July 31, August 11, 15, 31 (when I again found the eggs floating in a drop of liquid, having been deposited on the gauze between two and half-past four o'clock in the afternoon); September 9 (23 eggs laid on the earth near the entrance to the nest); September 19 (about 30 eggs on the gauze), and November 4 (about 30 eggs on the gauze). Thus, between July 13 and November 4, this spider laid nine clusters of eggs, all but one of which were placed on the same part of the gauze cover, above and a little in front of the door, and the total number of eggs deposited cannot have been less than 250. It is difficult to understand why she should have laid these eggs outside the nest, unless indeed she knew them to be sterile, and so treated them as refuse. I can scarcely believe that such a procedure is in accordance with the ordinary habits of these spiders; for, if the eggs and young are habitually exposed, then the perfect concealment of the nest would lose one of its most important uses. When we remember that there are minute hymenopterous insects which lay their eggs within the eggs of the spiders, we can see how important it may be that the entrance to a nest, which is at once nursery and stronghold, should be closed by a well-fitting door, and one which may exclude, not only the larger and more powerful enemies of the full-grown spiders, but also the tiny and almost imperceptible assailants of the eggs and young.