ox Mie NO SON TaN stk Ee SPIDERS OF 
Dobe IOA MOREY ACT ARSE eA EIN EP EE COL- 
Peet lOon OF Lik TN DEAN, WU Ss & UM: 
By Karm Narayan, M.Sc., Professor of Biology, St. John’s 
College, Agra. 
(Plate XXXII.) 
The present paper describes the ant-like spiders of the family 
Attidae in the Indian Museum collection. Most of the specimens 
have been collected in Bengal, while a few from Ceylon, Madras 
and other places have also been described. 
The work of identifying these spiders has been rather labo- 
rious, as the family Attidae has not been studied systematically in 
India so far. Mr. Gravely, in a recent paper (Rec. Ind. Mus. XI, 
p. 257, 1915), has called attention to the neglect which the study 
of spiders has met with in India. The remark applies much more 
forcibly to the Arachnomorph spiders than the Mygalomorphs. 
Pocock, in the “‘ Fauna of British India (Arachnida)”’, omits the 
family Attidae altogether and says, ‘‘ The group contains a vast 
number of species and is very imperfectly known—so imperfectly 
that no satisfactory account of it can at present be given.’’ The 
most complete work on ant-like spiders is Peckham’s ‘‘ Amt-like 
Spiders of the family Attidae’’ published in 1892, but since then a 
good deal of work has been done and the literature addedto. Itis 
rather unfortunate that the literature relating to species of these 
spiders already described is extremely scattered and the descrip- 
tions are mostly brief and very often no diagrams are given. In 
certain cases immature specimens have been made the basis of 
new species. However, I have followed McCook who, in his book 
** American Spiders and their Spinning Work,” says that the epi- 
gynum and male palpus are essential structures on which specific 
characters can be based with certainty and that immature specimens 
are not worth keeping in a collection. Consequently, I have not 
referred to any of the immature specimens that I came across in 
working out the collection, except those accompanied by adults. 
At the end of the paper I have put together most of the literature 
so far published on the species from the Oriental region of the two 
genera dealt with in this paper. 
I have to thank my Professor, Lt.-Col. J. Stephenson, I.M.S., 
who very kindly obtained permission for me to work in the Indian 
Museum and also got a number of books for me from the research 
grant of the Government College, Lahore. My thanks are also 
due to Dr. Annandale and Mr. Gravely for their valuable sugges- 
