CLASSIFICATION 399 



Africa, and eight of these are natives of Britain. D. arundinacea 

 is very abundant, especially in heather. It is about an eighth of 

 an inch in length. D. uncinata is also often met with. 

 Amaurobius, of which about eighty species are known, includes 

 some species of much larger size. Three species are native to 

 this country, A. ferox, A. similis, and A. fenestralis. A. ferox is 

 a large and rather formidable-looking spider, more than half an 

 inch in length, with powerful chelicerae. It is found under 

 stones and bark, and in cellars and outhouses. A. similis is the 

 commonest species in England, though A. fenestralis somewhat 

 replaces it in the north. They are smaller than A. ferox, but 

 are found in similar situations. 



Fam. 18. Psechridae. This is a small family of cribellate 

 spiders, consisting only of two genera, Psechrus and Fecenia, and 

 some eight species, all natives of Southern Asia and the adjacent 

 islands. The two species of Psechrus are large spiders. They 

 make large domed webs, which they stretch between trees or 

 rocks, and beneath which they hang in an inverted position. 



The calamistrum of these spiders is short, about half the 

 length of the fourth metatarsus. 



Fam. 19. Zodariidae (Enyoidae). In this family are in- 

 cluded a number of remarkable exotic spiders, most of them 

 somewhat Drassid-like in appearance, but generally with three- 

 clawed ^rsi. The group appears to be a somewhat heterogeneous 

 one, the twenty genera of which it consists presenting rather a 

 wide range of characteristics. 



Cydrela is an African genus of moderate sized spiders, contain- 

 ing five species of very curious habits. They scramble about and 

 burrow in the sand, in which, according to Simon, 1 they appear 

 to swim, and their chief burrowing implements are their pedipalpi, 

 which are specially modified, the tarsi in the female bristling 

 with spines, and being armed with one or more terminal claws. 



Laches (Lachesis) includes some larger pale-coloured spiders found 

 in Egypt and Syria, under stones in very hot and dry localities. 



Storena has representatives in all the tropical and sub-tropical 

 parts of the world, and numbers about fifty species. They are 

 of moderate size, with integuments smooth and glossy or finely 

 shagreened, usually dark-coloured, with white or yellow spots on 

 the abdomen. Hermippus (Fig. 206) is also African. Zodarion 



1 Hist. Nat. des Ar. i. p. 416. 



