146 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



his attention to the little spinners themselves ; but to his 

 surprise, with the exception of the work, in Latin, of Martin 

 Lister, published by the Koyal Society in 1678, he found 

 scarcely any authorities from which the information he so 

 much needed could be obtained. This, however, determined 

 the main lines along which his subsequent Natural History 

 work was directed. Thenceforth, from about the year 1820, 

 if not earlier, the Araneidea (or true spiders) became the 

 objects of an intensity of interest which never afterwards 

 flagged ; even continuing unabated long after defects of sight, 

 and other concomitants of advanced age, prevented any actual 

 work among them. As time went on other works on spiders, 

 notably those of Baron Walckenaer and C. L. Koch, made their 

 appearance, and, as well as their authors, came under Mr. Black- 

 wall's notice ; but his singularly retired and unobtrusive life led, 

 in some instances, to a complete and unfortunate isolation from 

 both authors and works in this branch of Natural History ; and, 

 with perhaps no more than two or three exceptions, Mr. Black- 

 wall's labours were for a long time equally unnoticed, even 

 probably unknown, by foreign workers. Thus, to note one 

 instance only, the materials for the great work of this portion 

 of Mr. Blackwall's life, his ' History of the Spiders of Great 

 Britain and Ireland,' were accumulating, jjart passu, with those 

 in Sweden of Nicolas Westring, for his invaluable work, ' Aranese 

 Suecicse,' the two works being published in the same year, 1861 ; 

 and yet these two authors were, up to that time, wholly unknown 

 to each other, either by correspondence or in the results of their 

 several labours. Working on, almost wholly unaided by any 

 other English worker, for forty or more years, in the investigation 

 of the spiders of his own immediate localities, and their habits and 

 economy, Mr. Blackwall published, besides an independent work, 

 'Researches in Zoology' (1834), (chiefly occupied by very in- 

 teresting chapters on ornithological subjects), numerous papers 

 on Araneology in difi'erent Natural History and scientific 

 journals, recording many species of spiders met with, and the 

 observations made upon them. It may not be uninteresting to 

 note these papers in some detail, as a proof of this constant and 

 unwearied work. Among the earliest papers published on 

 spiders are six which appeared in vols, iii., viii. and x., Edinb. 

 Philosoph. Mag., 3rd ser., 1833 — 36 (some of the contents of the 



