When she reaches maturity and is once settled, the Lycosa becomes eminently domesticated.  I have been living in close communion with her for the last three years.  I have installed her in large earthen pans on the window-sills of my study and I have her daily under my eyes.  Well, it is very rarely that I happen on her outside, a few inches from her hole, back to which she bolts at the least alarm.

We may take it, then, that, when not in captivity, the Lycosa does not go far afield to gather the wherewithal to build her parapet and that she makes shift with what she finds upon her threshold.  In these conditions, the building-stones are soon exhausted and the masonry ceases for lack of materials.

The wish came over me to see what dimensions the circular edifice would assume, if the Spider were given an unlimited supply.  With captives to whom I myself act as purveyor the thing is easy enough.  Were it only with a view to helping whoso may one day care to continue these relations with the big Spider of the waste-lands, let me describe how my subjects are housed.

A good-sized earthenware pan, some nine inches deep, is filled with a red, clayey earth, rich in pebbles, similar, in short, to that of the places haunted by the Lycosa.  Properly moistened into a paste, the artificial soil is heaped, layer by layer, around a central reed, of a bore equal to that of the animal’s natural burrow.  When the receptacle is filled to the top, I withdraw the reed, which leaves a yawning, perpendicular shaft.  I thus obtain the abode which shall replace that of the fields.

To find the hermit to inhabit it is merely the matter of a walk in the neighbourhood.  When removed from her own dwelling, which is turned topsy-turvy by my trowel, and placed in possession of the den produced by my art, the Lycosa at once disappears into that den.  She does not come out again, seeks nothing better elsewhere.  A large wire-gauze cover rests on the soil in the pan and prevents escape.

In any case, the watch, in this respect, makes no demands upon my diligence.  The prisoner is satisfied with her new abode and manifests no regret for her natural burrow.  There is no attempt at flight on her part.  Let me not omit to add that each pan must receive not more than one inhabitant.  The Lycosa is very intolerant.  To her, a neighbour is fair game, to be eaten without scruple when one has might on one’s side.  Time was when, unaware of this fierce intolerance, which is more savage still at breeding-time, I saw hideous orgies perpetrated in my overstocked cages.  I shall have occasion to describe those tragedies later.

Let us meanwhile consider the isolated Lycosae.  They do not touch up the dwelling which I have moulded for them with a bit of reed; at most, now and again, perhaps with the object of forming a lounge or bedroom at the bottom, they fling out a few loads of rubbish.  But all, little by little, build the kerb that is to edge the mouth.