76 TJIK KEPOirr OF THE No. 36 



TRANSCANADIAN SPIDERS. 

 J. 11. Emeeton, Boston^ Mass. 



About the year 1890, Mr. J. B. Tyrrell, who was fresh from exploration in 

 the north of Canada, sent me a little collection of spiders. About the same time, 

 Mr. Bean, who kept the telegraph office at the Canadian Pacific Railway Station at 

 Laggan, was collecting insects through the mountains, and incidentally spiders, 

 and he sent me some for identification, so I wrote a paper on Canadian spiderj;. 

 which was published in 1894 by the Connecticut Academy. Many of these spiders 

 were from the western part of Canada, and nearly all were of species known in the 

 east, but at that time hardly anything was known about their distribution across 

 tlie continent. Among the species collected by Bean was one since known by the 

 name of Linyphia nearctica, which was described in the 1894 paper and not noticed 

 again until fourteen years later, when for the first time I went to the top of Mt. 

 Mansfield, in Vermont, near Lake Champlain, and theTc found it abundant in the 

 dwarf spruce trees. Going down the mountain it ceased to be found a thousand 

 feet below the summit. Within a feAv years this species was found on the tops of 

 several of the New England mountains from an elevation of 2,500 feet up to the 

 highest trees. Although I had collected for many years in these mountains, this 

 species had been missed, as my time had been spent either in the valleys or on the 

 top above the trees, neglecting the upper edge of the forest. A few years later 

 Linyphia nearctica was found on the coast of Maine, and soon after in bogs, through 

 the northern part of that State, in association with Theridion zelotypum which had 

 long been known as far south as Portland and no farther. These two species 

 seemed to have such definite limits, and to be so easily found when they were 

 present, iiiat I was interested in following out their distribution, and so was led 

 to transcanadian spiders in general. 



In 1914 I went to the meeting of the Canadian Alpine Club in the Rocky 

 Mountains, and returned east by a roundabout way to see the country north of the 

 Saskatchewan River. In Jasper Park I was surprised to find, in company with 

 distinctly western speciee, my old acquaintance of down east, Theridion zelotypum, 

 living in the small spruce trees in the usual coarse cobwebs and cup-shaped nests. 

 At Athabasca Landing I found it again, and also at Prince Albert. Discussing 

 these finds among my friends led to the discovery of Theridion zelotypnm by 

 Mr. Waugh, at Nipigon and Manitoulin Island, and Linyphia nearctica by Messrs. 

 Townsend and St. John on the southern coast of Labrador. Much of the seasons 

 of 1915 and 1916 was spent in trying to define the southern limits of Theridion 

 zelotypum between the White Mountains and the St. Lawrence River. It appears 

 not to go into the White Mountains nor the Adirondacks, but is abundant around 

 the head waters of the Connecticut River and the Rangeley Lakes. In Dixville 

 Notch it is associated with Linyphia nearctica at an elevation of 1,800 feet. West- 

 ward it occurs at the southern end of Lake- Megantic, at Sherbrooke, M-^ntreal, and 

 Ottawa. 



Last summer I followed these two spiders along the edge of the Hudson Bay 

 bog, at Cochrane, Minaki and Lake Winnipeg to Le Pas and down the Hudson 

 Bay Railway as far as it is finished. Theridion zelotypum was abundant at all 

 these stations and conspicuously absent from the prairie country around Winnipe-g 

 and Dauphin; Linyphia nearctica only appeared at Kettle Rapids, the most 

 northern station. The spots on the map show the stations of these two species, the 

 Theridion in stars and the Linyphia. in circles, and they form on their southern 



