SOME ARACHNIDS AT HANOVER, CAPE COLONY. 157 



Selenops, one of the Clubionidae, is notable for the lightning-like 

 rapidity of its movements. It is a singularly flat spider of a speckled 

 reddish-brown color, almost exactly like that of the dolerite rocks on 

 the kopjes where it is found. Its legs are long and distinctly banded, 

 giving the whole spider a mottled appearance. When you turn up a 

 stone under which it is, you will find it, clinging back downwards to the 

 lower side. The moment it becomes alarmed it begins to run, sidewise, 

 with a circular motion, first in one direction, then in another, with such 

 astounding rapidity that it becomes just a blur on the stone; and then 

 it flashes sidewise over the edge. 



We come now to perhaps the most interesting finds, which concern 

 two of the Lycosidae and one of the Eresidae. 



It was long held to be an established fact that no two-lunged spiders 

 were trap-door makers; even up to the present, it seems that only a 

 couple of instances had been observed of two-lunged spiders construct- 

 ing trap-doors to their nests, and these only in the family Lycosidae 

 (one in South Africa, one in North Africa and one in Eussia). But 

 the finds at Hanover have clearly established the trap-door habit as a 

 regular thing in the case of two species of South African Lycosidae 

 (one of which may or may not be identical with L. domicola, the South 

 African instance above referred to) and one species of Eresidae. I 

 have found many of these nests and have sent specimens to the South 

 African Museum.* 



The Lycosidae are numerous and common throughout South Africa. 

 One finds them in great numbers under stones, in the projecting tube 

 nests and running about the veld. I have found fourteen species 

 here, varying greatly in color and shape, and in size from one eighth 

 of an inch to about an inch in length. Ten of these are new. 



Lycosa subvittata has already been mentioned as building the nest 

 with projecting tube, closely resembling that of the new Hermachastes. 

 The underground holes of these two nests differ considerably, mainly 

 perhaps in the fact that, whereas that of Hermachastes is regularly 

 cylindrical and beautifully white-silk-lined throughout, that of 

 L. subvittata is not silk-lined at all but only brown-webbed for about 

 an inch at the top and is not regularly cylindrical. It is not, how- 

 ever, necessary to compare the holes in detail here; the interest is now 

 in connection with the web-lined, irregularly rimmed, projecting 

 tubes, whose essential differences may be briefly noted. The tube of 

 the Lycosa is generally shorter, greater in diameter and untidier in 

 appearance than that of the Hermachastes, and, while it often slants 



* It is remarkable that, while I was laying the facts of the first trap-door 

 Lycosa before Dr. Purcell, he should have established at Cape Town the trap- 

 door habit in the case of Cydrela, one of the Zodariidse, another two-lunged 

 family. 



