166 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 
He gave the number of genera and species of each thus far 
collected, and compared the fauna as to its wealth of species 
with the fauna of some European countries. 
Mr. Mann stated that he had recently noticed a small Scara- 
baeid, Bolbocerus farctus, stridulate. 
Messrs. Smith, Schwarz, Alwood, and Townsend discussed 
stridulation in Coleoptera, and incidentally the nature of the at- 
traction of light on Insects. 
Mr. Smith gave some further notes on the sexual characters of 
the species of Lachnosterna. He suggested that the asymmetry 
may be useful in facilitating copulation, and retaining hold under 
all circumstances, recounting his experience in this direction 
with L. hirticula. 
Mr. Schwarz gave some examples of asymmetry of secondary 
sexual characters in Coleoptera. 
OCTOBER 4, 1888. 
Seven members present. President Schwarz in the chair. 
Dr. Marx read the following paper : 
ON A NEW AND INTERESTING SPIDER FROM THE UNITED STATES. 
BY GEORGE MARX, M. D. 
Allow me to draw your attention to a new and very remarkable spider 
from the United States, which is so singular and strange in its structural 
characters that nothing like it has been hitherto known to arachnologists ; 
so peculiar that it cannot be placed in our present system ; so anom- 
alous that it appears like the representative of a prototype, in which 
characters were united in one individual which are now distributed into 
widely differing genera. 
It was found by my friend Dr. Fox, of this city, in the neighborhood of 
Lookout Mountain, Tenn., where it lives in the forests of that mountain- 
ous region. It constructs at the underside of projecting cliffs or rocks a 
white, dense web that resembles a saucer or the shade of a student's lamp, 
the narrow part being attached to the surface of the stone, the broader 
and lower margin hanging face downward, being held in place by some 
stronger guy threads and a loose reticulum which surrounds the whole 
structure. In this the spider dwells in an inverted position, and it shakes 
the web like some other species (especially Pholcus) when one ap- 
proaches it. 
When I received this spider it appeared at the first glance, by its gen- 
eral aspect, the long, slender legs, the shape of the body, the pale color, 
