3l6 NOTES ON THE ARACHNIDA OF EPPING FOREST. 



black villaincus-Iooking creature, is found in cellars and out- 

 houses, behind boards, etc. The sudden apparition of four or 

 five of these behind one board, revealed by the flickering light of 

 a candle in a gloomy cellar, is well calculated to quench the 

 valour of the stoutest naturalist, and usually does so. 



Little less alarming is the appearance in one's bedroom of 

 the " Cardinal Spider," Tegenavia parietina, careering over the 

 ceiling with its long hairy legs, obviously intending to drop 

 plump on the bed and devastate the unwilling occupant. 

 Cardinal Wolsey, in those days in residence at Hampton Court, 

 was, tradition has it, much terrified at the aspect of these 

 enormous spiders. Hence their name, though tlie good cardinal, 

 if we are to believe historians, had no silly squeamishness with 

 regard to insects and creeping things in general. 



Then, again, the Water Spider, Argyroneta aquatica, one of the 

 largest and most interesting of our British spiders, though uccurr- 

 ing in many parts of Essex, has, however, only now been definitely 

 recorded for the county. This is really an interesting spider, for 

 it takes to the water as though it were its natural element, 

 swimming with its hairy legs, the body enclosed by a layer of 

 air entangled in the hairs and glittering like silver as it swims. 

 The nest, usually called the " diving bell," is made beneath the 

 surface, and the eggs are laid and the young hatched out 

 therein. There are many points still to be discovered in the 

 habits of this and many other spiders which would well repay 

 the efforts of those who are Field-naturalists and have little 

 opportunity or inclination to enter the depths of the science in 

 the studio, with microscope and section-cutter at hand. 



I will now, after these few and more or less relavant 

 remarks, add the list of species which are here recorded for the 

 first time for the fauna of Epping Forest and Essex, and in 

 doing so I would appeal to all Field-naturalists to assist, during 

 the next season, in collecting material for a still larger county 

 list which will appear shortly in the volume of " Essex," of the 

 Victorian Histoyy of the Counties of England. It would ill become 

 the Essex Field Club to allow their county to rank with those 

 which have but one or two recorded species of spiders to offer, 

 or even haply to sink to the level of those pitiable districts of 

 which the Arachnologist can scarcely even recall the name. 



