CHAPTER XV 



ARACHNIDA EMBOLOBRANCHIATA {CONTINUED) 



ARANEAE {CONTINUED) CLASSIFICATION 



The systematic study of Spiders has hitherto presented very great 

 difficulties. There is an extensive literature on the subject, but 

 the more important works are costly, not commonly to be found 

 in libraries, and written in diverse languages. Moreover, the 

 nomenclature is only now emerging from a condition of chaos. 

 Able and diligent Arachnologists have done admirable work in 

 studying and describing the Spider fauna of their various countries, 

 and occasional tentative suggestions have been put forth with a 

 view to reducing to some sort of order the vast mass of hetero- 

 geneous material thus collected. Most schemes of classification, 

 based chiefly upon a knowledge of European forms, have proved 

 quite inadequate for the reception of the vast numbers of strange 

 exotic species with which recent years have made us acquainted. 

 The number of described species is very large, and is rapidly in- 

 creasing ; but though we are very far indeed from anything like 

 an exhaustive knowledge of existing forms, it may now be said 

 that almost every considerable area of the earth's surface is at 

 least partially represented in the cabinets of collectors, and it is 

 possible to take a comprehensive view of the whole Spider fauna, 

 and to suggest a scheme of classification very much less likely 

 than heretofore to be fundamentally deranged by new discoveries. 

 The first to apply the Linnaean nomenclature to Spiders was 

 Clerck, in his Araneae Suecicae (1757), which gives an account 

 of seventy spiders, some of which are varieties of the same 

 species. A few new species were added by Linnaeus, De Geer, 

 Scopoli, Fabricius, etc., but the next work of real importance was 

 that of Westring (1861), who, under the same title, described 



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