. 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. MATERNAL INDUSTRY: COCOONS OF ORBWEAVERS. 81 in Struct- ure. a coooon much like that of our Cophinaria. Fig. 46 sliows the external case, and -Fig. 45 gives a section view of the central egg sac, supported in the midst of a bunch of loose flossy silk.^ I liavc found numbers of Copliinaria's cocoons on vacant city lots in Philadelphia, strung to the stems of tall weeds on either side of a well traveled footpath. The mothers had
. 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. MATERNAL INDUSTRY: COCOONS OF ORBWEAVERS. 81 in Struct- ure. a coooon much like that of our Cophinaria. Fig. 46 sliows the external case, and -Fig. 45 gives a section view of the central egg sac, supported in the midst of a bunch of loose flossy silk.^ I liavc found numbers of Copliinaria's cocoons on vacant city lots in Philadelphia, strung to the stems of tall weeds on either side of a well traveled footpath. The mothers had safely passed througli the The liigg perils of assaulting boys and voracious birds, and left these tokens of their maternal care in this conspicuous spot. As far as examined the cocoons contained broods of healthy spiders. One excep- tion, however, permitted me to see the position and structure of the egg mass. It is a hemispherical mass five-sixteenths of an inch high and wide. The eggs are bright yellow, contained within a delicate white or pink hued membranous silken sac, through which they can be seen in outline. It is interesting to observe that there is some variety among the mother Argiopes in the manner of preparing a cocoon. I have one before me which is composed, ya^f^^o^ first, of a soft silken exterior case; then, of three easily sep- arated layers of delicate yellow silken tissue, extremely soft and beautiful. Next to these layers is the loose yellow flossy mass hitherto described, and then the brown padding which surrounds the egg sac proper. This brown padding is not as ^,^^^^^ p^^^g abundant as I commonly find Kia. 48. Cocoon cose of Argiope fasciata. Fio. 45. Section of • i. j; .1 1 ii 4. same, to show the central egg sac. (After Cuvier.) it, tor the reason, perhaps, that the yellow silken envelope is so much more pronounced. Another cocoon before me has in it nothing but the brown padding, scarcely a trace of yellow floss, and no layers such as above describ
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectspiders, bookyear1889
