. American spiders and their spinning work. A natural history of the orbweaving spiders of the United States, with special regard to their industry and habits. Spiders. NESTING HABITS AND PROTECTIVE ARCHITECTURE. 303 Nest of Bpeira Fig. 278. Cylindrical nest of Epeira thad- deus, spun in the angle of a door. Closely related to Zilla in the character of its snare is Epeira thaddeus, but in this species the nest making habit appears to be more strongly de- veloped. It may often be found nested in the angle of a door or window, or other like situation, on the outhouses of farms and rur
. American spiders and their spinning work. A natural history of the orbweaving spiders of the United States, with special regard to their industry and habits. Spiders. NESTING HABITS AND PROTECTIVE ARCHITECTURE. 303 Nest of Bpeira Fig. 278. Cylindrical nest of Epeira thad- deus, spun in the angle of a door. Closely related to Zilla in the character of its snare is Epeira thaddeus, but in this species the nest making habit appears to be more strongly de- veloped. It may often be found nested in the angle of a door or window, or other like situation, on the outhouses of farms and rural buildings. Here it spins a white silken tube of close texture, which is generally a quite exact cylinder. In this respect it differs from the nests of Zilla and Epeira triaranea, which are almost habitually in the shape of an inverted bowl or dome. The cylindrical tent of Thaddeus varies in length from three-fourths of an inch to one and one-quarter inch, the latter being the length of the nest represented at Fig. 278. The cylinder is stayed by a series of lines attached to it at various parts and stretched to numerous points in the surrounding sur- face, thus holding it intact. Within the cylinder Thaddeus sits holding her trapline, through which all agitation upon her sectoral orb is com- municated. She has learned, however, the value of screening her cylindrical tent beneath a shelter of clustered leaves, as at Fig. 280. In this case the leaves are agglutinated by threads spun upon the inside or sewed upon the out- side, precisely as in the case of the Insular and Shamrock spiders. I have found this cylindrical nest spun within the needle like leaves of the pine tree, and the manner in which it was stayed, and preserved in sufficiently rigid attitude for the practical uses of its occupant, was a good example of the ingenuity of this species. (Fig. 279.) In the above ex- amples the nest is visible by the observer, but at other times it is wholly screened from view, being s
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectspiders, bookyear1889
