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Happily the box had a glass lid, so the inmate could be seen in comfort; and when the spider's history was told there was always an interest created in even this poor despised creature. When first placed in its new home the Tegenaria began spinning tunnels of white silky web in various directions across the box.
This means of defence seems to be pretty frequent among Spiders. Our own big House Spider, Tegenaria domestica, encloses her eggs in a globule strengthened with a rind of silk and of crumbly wreckage from the mortar of the walls. Other species, living in the open under stones, work in the same way. They wrap their eggs in a mineral shell held together with silk.
I knew well the kind of expression I should see on the faces of my friends when I produced the box which contained my pet Tegenaria, a large black spider, long-legged and very swift, a well-known kind of house-spider.
I had kept the Tegenaria more than a year in confinement, and having shown such admirable motherly instincts, I thought she had earned the reward of liberty. No doubt she welcomed "the order of release"! At any rate, she scampered away under some tree-roots, and possibly resides there with her numerous family to this day.
The snareling falls on the sheet-web. Tegenaria hastens up and bites him in the neck. Having said this, let us experiment a little. In the web of the House Spider, I make a round hole, two fingers wide. The hole remains yawning all day long; but next morning it is invariably closed.
The House Spider, or Tegenaria domestica, prevents her web, spun in a corner of the wall, from losing its shape at the least breath of air, by loading it with crumbling plaster and allowing tiny fragments of mortar to accumulate. Are we face to face with a similar process? Let us try experiment, which is preferable to any amount of conjecture.
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