NOV 8 1901 



PREFACE, 



Among the pioneers in the study of American Entomology 

 Nicholas Marcellus Hentz must take a prominent position. 

 That he was an entomologist of general attainments, his cor- 

 respondence with Harris — already familiar to the readers of 

 the first volume in this series of " Occasional Papers" — bears 

 abundant witness, but with the study of American Arachnology 

 his name and his writings are almost exclusively associated. 



In selecting the Spiders for his special study, he found not 

 only an interesting, but an almost entirely unexplored field. 

 Before his time, with the exception of a few accidental descrip- 

 tions scattered through the works of writers, for the most part 

 European, nothing relating to North American Spiders had 

 been published. This was perhaps, on the wdiole, fortunate, 

 for as he lived for the greatest part of the time in places where 

 great libraries were inaccessible, the danger of repeating the 

 work of others was avoided. But whether his choice was acci- 

 dental or predetermined, he began, soon after settling in Amer- 

 ica, a diligent study of these insects, and devoted all the time 



(V) 



