The upstroke of the T is however, very short, and one of the arms is longer than the other, and curved downwards at its extremity. This is, as far as I know, the first recorded example of a wafer-nest from the Antipodes, and it may be regarded as one of the first fruits of a harvest which lies ready for the reaping of any naturalist resident in those parts. Hitherto the only nests which I have seen or heard of from Australia were of the cork type (_Ants and Spiders_, p. 132).
Next in order to the single-door branched wafer comes the _double-door unbranched wafer_ type, which is the simplest of all the nests possessing two doors. This habitation, the work of _N. Eleanora_, has been already described (_Ants and Spiders_, p. 106), and I have not much to add to the account there given.
Perhaps some of my readers may remember that, while I was actually engaged on the proofs of _Ants and Spiders_ I had one of these _Eleanora_ spiders in captivity, and that I gave an account (p. 148) of her behaviour up to the latest moment possible. She had been captured on October 23, 1872, and placed, together with five young ones found with her in the nest, on the surface of some earth in a medium-sized flower-pot covered over with gauze. The young ones soon made nests for themselves in the earth, each furnished with its little door, but the mother roamed about on the surface of the soil, and it was not until she had been twenty-one days in captivity that she commenced spinning a silk cell.
This cell in twelve days' time presented the form of a rude figure of 8, and had an aperture at either end; it was just large enough to contain the spider when the legs were extended; its upper surface was attached to the gauze covering of the pot, and its lower to the earth. It was at this stage that the record was broken off, and I will now relate the remainder of the history.
Four days before the cell was commenced, the spider had covered the under surface of the gauze with a semi-transparent film of a substance resembling varnish, which formed a band about three inches long by half an inch wide, close to where the rim of the flower-pot threw the most shade. It was at one extremity of this band that the silk-cell was formed, but it is important to note that this band of varnish was longer than the cell, which only measured an inch and a quarter from end to end, for we shall see that the layer of varnish was apparently laid with a view to further operations.