[Footnote 125: M. Simon has discovered another species of _Atypus_ at Digne in the Basses Alpes which constructs a similar nest to that described above. This species was detected for the first time by M. Simon and described by him under the name of _Atypus bleodonticus_.]
Indeed, I believe that, in this specimen, the upper extremity of the tube is really closed, for, when I succeeded in inflating this aërial portion, the lips did not part, but remained drawn together.
It seems very extraordinary that the mouth of the tube should be thus closed, so that the female spider becomes a prisoner, self-immured, and I can only suppose that this is a temporary condition, limited perhaps to the period during which she receives the visits of the male.
At the very base of the tube I found a mass of earth, roots and vegetable fibres, and in this I hoped to have detected the _débris_ of insects or other food, such as I sometimes find at the bottom of and below the tubes of the trap-door nests in the South, but of this there was no trace.
It is difficult to me to imagine how the spider could contrive to live by the capture of worms, after the fashion suggested by M. Simon; for who does not know the speed with which, on the slightest alarm, worms draw back into their holes and escape pursuit, and the muscular power which they exert in resisting any attempts to drag them out of the earth?
M. Simon's account of the closed tube and capture of worms by this spider corresponds, however, with that given by Mr. Joshua Brown, the first discoverer of _Atypus_ in England.
This gentleman communicated his discovery to Mr. Edward Newman[126] in 1856, since which time (with the exception of M. Simon's paper quoted above) little or nothing seems to have been done to clear up the points which remain doubtful in the history of these singular creatures.
[Footnote 126: Note on _Atypus Sulzeri_ of Latreille, by Mr. Edward Newman, read before the Linnean Society; a report of this communication is given in _The Zoologist_, vol. xiv. (1856), p. 5021.]
Several nests of _Atypus_ were discovered by Mr. Joshua Brown in the neighbourhood of Hastings, when traversing a lane bounded on either side by high and steep sand-banks, partially covered with grass and bushes.
