. 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. 108 AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWOBK. 47, but I have usually been able to determine it, when found without an occupant, by the following features: The sheeted hub is not as large and the tissue is not as thick, indeed it is sometimes expressed by only a faint puff, or simply by a serrated or nodulated cord, as at Fig. 99, i. In short, a well defined shield seems to be a permanent characteristic of the Basket Argiope's or
. 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. 108 AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWOBK. 47, but I have usually been able to determine it, when found without an occupant, by the following features: The sheeted hub is not as large and the tissue is not as thick, indeed it is sometimes expressed by only a faint puff, or simply by a serrated or nodulated cord, as at Fig. 99, i. In short, a well defined shield seems to be a permanent characteristic of the Basket Argiope's orb, while Banded Argiope rather inclines to omit it or express it by zigzag cords. These cords are often thrown in arcs around the hub as at Fig. 99, ii and iii, and give a pretty and striking effect to the web. However, I must confess that my confidence in these distinctions is not very great; and to the untrained observer the differences between the two webs would hardly be apparent. It is significant, as illustrating the community and persistence of habit in a genus, however widely separated, that a spider (Epeira mauritia Walck.) closely allied to our Argiope argyraspis is found in the is- lands of Mauritia, ^° ^^' Reunion, and Mada- canCon- / w ⢠n vi gener. g*»scar (Africa), with precisely the same habits. Vinson^ describes the snare of this aranead with its peculiar zigzag decorations, with the X-like position of the legs as she hangs upon her snare, and the cocoon in its site, in language which might be used with equal pro- priety of Argyraspis. With slight change the figure of the African Argiope as given by Vinson might stand for a draw- ing of our American species. A third species of Argiope, which appears to be the Argiope argentata^ of Koch, is found abundantly in the extreme Southwest of the Argiope United States. I have many specimens from Southern Califor- tata ^^^> â ^'l^sre it abounds, spinning its large, beautiful webs every- where in the neighbor
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectspiders, bookyear1889
