PREFACE. 



I count it a duty as well as a pleasure to place among the number of 

 those entitled to my public thanks the name of Miss Elizabeth F. Bonsall, 

 who has made the original drawings for nearly all the plates contained in 

 the atlas. Her faithful and successful work has not always been correctly 

 reproduced by lithographers and colorists, but for the most part it speaks 

 for itself in the admirable rendering from life of the species which she has 

 figured. 



As the frontispiece of this volume I have printed a portrait of Professor 

 Nicholas Marcellus Hentz, M. D., who may justly be regarded as the father 

 of American Araneology. John Abbot was indeed before him in 

 Professor ^j^^ ^^^j^^ ^^^ during the early part of this century made per- 

 sonal studies in South Carolina and Georgia of our American 

 spider fauna. The results of these studies remain in the descriptions of 

 Walckenaer and in the beautiful manuscript drawings now preserved in 

 the Library of the British Museum of Natural History in Kensington, 

 London, and to which fuller reference is made in the pages which follow. 

 Some interesting notes upon the life of Professor Hentz, written by the 

 late Mr. Edward Burgess, may be found in the preface to " The Spiders of 

 the United States," published by the Boston Society of Natural History. I 

 am indebted to Professor Henshaw, the Secretary of that Society, for a 

 photograph of the likeness from which the phototype plate of Professor 

 Hentz has been made. It has been reproduced as faithfully as the age 

 and condition of the original photograph would allow. 



In reviewing this book it falls out as a matter of course that I note imper- 

 fections therein. Most of these, it may be said in all fairness, are due to the 

 peculiar circumstances under which the work has been wrought. 

 ^, . , Some of the plates were finished, printed, and even colored, 

 awaiting their place in the volume, as many as ten years ago. 

 In the progress of study my views of certain species were modified, thus 

 compelling some modification of the printed results. But this, as expressed 

 in the plates, could not be done without rejecting and remaking the plates, 

 a loss I did not feel it necessary to bear. Corrections and modifications 

 have therefore been made in the text and in the plate descriptions, and 

 no practical disadvantage need be felt by the student. Moreover, the 

 detached manner in ^vluch all my work has been done, taking an hour 

 here and there, or a week or so from a summer vacation, and the inabil- 

 ity, because of professional obligations, to give close and connected over- 

 sight to the work of artists, lithographers, copyists, and colorists has resulted 

 in some blunders which have indeed been easily corrected in the text, and 

 would attract but little attention from the ordinary observer, but which 

 none the less to an author are a blemish upon his work. 



Nevertheless, the author has at least the satisfaction of believing that 

 he has honestly, faithfully, and impartially endeavored to meet every ques- 

 tion, whether in the life habits or classification of spiders, to which he has 



