It goes without saying that, in a state of liberty, on our barren waste-lands, the Lycosa does not indulge in such sumptuous architecture.  I have given the reason:  she is too great a stay-at-home to go in search of materials and she makes use of the limited resources which she finds around her.  Bits of earth, small chips of stone, a few twigs, a few withered grasses:  that is all, or nearly all.  Wherefore the work is generally quite modest and reduced to a parapet that hardly attracts attention.

My captives teach us that, when materials are plentiful, especially textile materials that remove all fears of landslip, the Lycosa delights in tall turrets.  She understands the art of donjon-building and puts it into practice as often as she possesses the means.

This art is akin to another, from which it is apparently derived.  If the sun be fierce or if rain threaten, the Lycosa closes the entrance to her dwelling with a silken trellis-work, wherein she embeds different matters, often the remnants of victims which she has devoured.  The ancient Gael nailed the heads of his vanquished enemies to the door of his hut.  In the same way, the fierce Spider sticks the skulls of her prey into the lid of her cave.  These lumps look very well on the ogre’s roof; but we must be careful not to mistake them for warlike trophies.  The animal knows nothing of our barbarous bravado.  Everything at the threshold of the burrow is used indiscriminately:  fragments of Locust, vegetable remains and especially particles of earth.  A Dragon-fly’s head baked by the sun is as good as a bit of gravel and no better.

And so, with silk and all sorts of tiny materials, the Lycosa builds a lidded cap to the entrance of her home.  I am not well acquainted with the reasons that prompt her to barricade herself indoors, particularly as the seclusion is only temporary and varies greatly in duration.  I obtain precise details from a tribe of Lycosae wherewith the enclosure, as will be seen later, happens to be thronged in consequence of my investigations into the dispersal of the family.

At the time of the tropical August heat, I see my Lycosae, now this batch, now that, building, at the entrance to the burrow, a convex ceiling, which is difficult to distinguish from the surrounding soil.  Can it be to protect themselves from the too-vivid light?  This is doubtful; for, a few days later, though the power of the sun remain the same, the roof is broken open and the Spider reappears at her door, where she revels in the torrid heat of the dog-days.

Later, when October comes, if it be rainy weather, she retires once more under a roof, as though she were guarding herself against the damp.  Let us not be too positive of anything, however:  often, when it is raining hard, the Spider bursts her ceiling and leaves her house open to the skies.