Note 38 — PART I.

I have seen the remains of ants at the bottom of the tube of trap-door spider nests, and watched a hunting spider, Lycosa, capture a large black ant (Formica pubescens), by entangling it in threads, which it deftly spun about its limbs, while running rapidly round the struggling victim in a circle, and dodging out of the way of the ant's mandibles. In England one may frequently see ants caught in the spiders' webs among the rose-bushes, and Mr. Blackwall says, in his Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland, that Theridion riparium lives principally on ants.