ANNALS OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



I. — On some new Forms of Arachnida. By W. S. 

 MacLeay, Esq., A.M., F.L.S., &c. 



[With Plates.] 



WHILE I take shame to myself for never having fulfilled a 

 promise made months ago to the c Magazine of Zoology and 

 Botany/ I hope to make up for past indolence by contribu- 

 ting my mite very frequently in future to its successor e The 

 Annals of Natural History.' In the mean time I shall be 

 glad if any interest is excited by the novelty of the forms here- 

 after described. Four of them at least are very singular, and 

 I have selected them as such out of a great variety of new 

 forms in my cabinet. 



M. Latreille has somewhere said that it would be difficult 

 to discover a spider that cannot find its place in one of 

 Walckenaer's divisions. The truth however is that naturalists 

 as yet know but little of Arachnida. Leon Dufour, Koch, 

 and even the distinguished Walckenaer himself, are acquainted 

 with but few extra-European forms compared with the im- 

 mense variety that exist. The great majority of species are 

 inhabitants of warm climates, and being in general extremely 

 difficult to preserve, they are therefore rare in our collections. 

 Yet no Annulosa are more curious in their structure or per- 

 form more important functions in the ceconomy of nature. My 

 custom, when I was abroad, was to make sketches of the spe- 

 cies while yet alive ; which plan I recommend to naturalists 

 as the only safe mode of studying these animals. The pencil 

 is, for the entomologist, an instrument as necessary to wield 

 as the pen. 



I now place the following species before naturalists, in order 

 to prove how little is as yet known of even that part of the class 

 Arachnida which has been the most studied, namely, Spiders*, 



* For instance, not any one part of the definition given by Mr. Kirby 

 (Int. to Ent. vol. iv. p. 397) to the Araneidea is correct, except that the 



Ann. Nat. Hist. Vol. 2. No. 7. Sept. 1838. b 



