294 SPECIFIC DESCRIPTIONS OF 



joints of the palpi, have strong lateral brush-like 

 fringes of close-set sooty black hairs. The superior 

 pair of tarsal claws are denticulated, but not uniformly 

 either in strength, number, or position. 



No doubt this will prove a very troublesome spider 

 to distinguish with certainty from N. ccementaria, but 

 the almost constant presence of a spine or spines on 

 the outer face of the genual joint of the third pair of 

 legs seems to be a good distinguishing character ; in 

 no one example out of nine carefully examined could 

 I detect their absence altogether, while a single spine 

 even on N. ccementaria is rare. 



In the present species five examples had three spines 

 on each of these joints ; two had two spines on each ; 

 one had a single spine on each ; another had one on 

 one side, two on the other. 



The nest, however, is very characteristic and 

 peculiar. It is of the wafer-lid type, and so cannot, 

 from even the outside, be mistaken for that of N. 

 camentaria, which is of the cork-lid type ; it is, more- 

 over, branched below, while that of N. ccBmcntaria is 

 a single unbranched tube. It has also an inside door, 

 or valve, of very remarkable construction, having two 

 perfect cork-like faces, securely shutting off either the 

 branch, or the main tube just above the branch, at 

 pleasure. By this latter character it is distinguished 

 also from the tube of N. Mandersfjcrua, as well as by 

 the absence of a second short branch or cavity, lately 

 discovered in the nest of this last spider. Examples of 

 this spider were found, not unfrequently, but invariably 

 in such nests as that above described, at Hyeres. 



The female sex only has yet been met with. 



Habitat. Hyeres. 



