']I0. 





Article V. — A Descripfire Cataloffne of the Phalcnir/ijiid' of 

 Illinois. By Clarence M. Weed, M. So. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The great majority of the American species of those fa- 

 miliar creatures commonly known as "harvest-men " or "dad- 

 dy-long-legs" (not to be confounded with the crane-flies — 

 TIpulidd' — which go by by the latter name in Europe) belong 

 to the subfamily Plialangiimc oi the family Phalan()i(hi> oi the 

 suborder Opilonea and order Arthrogastra. Though abundant 

 and widely distributed, these arachnids have as yet received 

 comparatively little attention in this country. The first Ameri- 

 can descriptions were published by Thomas Say in 1821 (Jour. 

 Phil. Acad. Nat, Sci., Vol. 11., pp. 65-68), when four species 

 were characterized under the genus Phalangium. Besides 

 the above the only descriptive paper that has appeared is that 

 by Dr. Horatio C.- Wood, Jr., entitled "On the Phalangeae 

 of the United States of America," which was published in 1868 

 in the Communications of the Essex Institute (Vol. VI., pp. 

 10-40). In 1885, Prof. L. M. Underwood published a list of 

 the described species (Canadian Entomologist, Vol. XVI., pp. 

 167-169), but added nothing to our knowledge of the group. 

 Finally, in the "American Naturalist" for October, 1887 (Vol. 

 XXI., p. 985), the present writer published a brief note calling 

 attention to the proper generic position of several species 

 hitherto retained in the old genus Phalangium. 



In the present paper I have followed, in a general way, the 

 classification adopted by Simon in his admirable monograph 

 Les Arachnides de France (Vol, VII.), and my characteriza- 

 tions of genera are little more than translations from this 

 author. For an elaborate discussion of the anatomy and rela- 

 tions of the group, I must refer the reader to the above mono- 

 graph and other general works on the subject. 



The Laboratory collections on which this paper is based, 

 have largely been made within the last two years, and represent 



