The tubes are, as has been already stated, open during the spring, and we may suppose that the spider, on the approach of warm weather, wakes up from her winter lethargy, and tears away this concealing thatch. But if one of these spiders should by chance happen to free this silk-woven thatch by cutting round some three-fourths of its circumference, so as to leave it still attached to the rim of the aperture of the nest by the remaining quarter, she would then have made for herself a veritable, though rather rude trap-door of the wafer kind.
It is most likely, however, that the spider knows what she is about and that a door to her dwelling would be the reverse of an advantage to her, for she is more powerful and swifter than the generality of European trap-door spiders, and, as she probably lives by leaping out upon and hunting her prey, she no doubt needs to have the entrance to her nest free of all encumbrance.
I am indebted to the Rev. W. G. Brackenridge for evidence of the very interesting fact that _Lycosa narbonensis_ closes her nest at Cannes in the winter.
I was aware that Latreille stated that the Tarantula possessed this habit,[147] and I was anxious to know whether the species which I had detected at Cannes, inhabiting as it did open nests in the month of May, would also exhibit this curious custom. Being unable to visit Cannes myself during the winter, I applied to Mr. Brackenridge, who, on the 28th of January last (1874), secured a very perfect specimen of the aërial portion or chimney of one of the nests having the orifice closed in the way above described, and most kindly transmitted it to me.
[Footnote 147: P. A. Latreille, Mem. Soc. Hist. Nat., Paris (an. VII. de la République), p. 124: "L'araignée _tarentule_ ferme aussi son habitation, mais cet opercule n'est pas mobile, et n'est construit que pour l'hiver."]
I have, on a very few occasions, found the doors of a wafer or cork nest spun up during the winter at Mentone, and on digging have discovered the spider alive, though partially torpid, inside; but this is quite an exceptional event. I should much like to know, however, whether this becomes the rule in the case of the nests of those trap-door spiders which inhabit climates less favoured than that of Mentone.