A Spider’s Den.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 936, 5 December 1933, Page 6

A Spider’s Den.

Nature Notes.

By

James Drummond,

F.L.8., F.Z.S.

'J'HE AMBITION of a female spider of the brown manuka species is to make a cosy retreat in the spray of a leafy manuka tree, spinning smooth, white, transparent silk for building material. There she sits close to the only opening, a neat round hole. Her front legs rest on the edge. This attitude leaves her concealed, but always ready to spring on any insect foolish enough to walk into her parlour. A female kept in captivity in Wellington by Dr J. G. Myers caught flies by stretching entanglements of fine silk near her retreat. She tore off their heads and wings, but did not follow the practice of common garden spiders, which wrap the bodies of captives in silken swathes. Dr Myers found several manuka twigs bound together by a sheet of stiff white silk of very close texture. They formed a rough cylinder about an inch and a quarter long. Both the top and the bottom of the cylinder had silken covers. On each side there was a small window, jagged in outline, covered with silk so thin as to be transparent. The owner usually might have been seen watching at either window, as if looking through a pane of glass. On a slit being made in the silk, she rushed to repel the attack. She furiously assailed a pen offered, and tried to seize the point in her long and slender fangs. Dr Myers kept the cylinder and its contents for a week without opening it. During that time the spider did not emerge, lie believes that females of this species are self-imprisoned with their eggs, in order to guard them until they hatch. 1 hen, probablv, the females die. The species has a ten-syllabled Latin name, which cannot be recalled without the reference. Its popular name. brown manuka spider, is more convenient.