INTRODUCTION 



This book is designed to make the reader acquainted with 

 the common spiders most likely to be found over a large part 

 of the United States as far south as Georgia and as far west as 

 the Rocky Mountains. Local collections show that in the 

 neighborhood of any city in the country there are at least three 

 or four hundred species of spiders ; but few such collections 

 have been made, and it is not yet possible to tell all the 

 kinds of spiders that live in any particular place, or how far 

 any species extends over the country. The species which 

 are here described and figured are all of them well known and 

 have been described in other books. Rare and doubtful species 

 are omitted, though some of these may in time prove to be among 

 the most common. A large number of spiders are too small to 

 be easily seen, and most of these are omitted, only a few repre- 

 sentative species being described. Spiders have, unfortunately, 

 no common names, except such indefinite ones as " the garden 

 spider," " the black spider," " the jumping spider," and the 

 like. Even " tarantula" has become only a nickname for 

 any large spider. The names of spiders, like those of other 

 animals, have been given to them independently by different 

 persons, so that many of them have more than one name, and 

 the more common the spider the larger the number of names. 

 In this book only one name is usually given to each species, and 

 the name used is one that has been published with a descrip- 

 tion of the species in some other well-known book. Readers 

 who are interested in the names of species and in comparing 

 the classifications of different naturalists are referred to a 



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