JOHN BLACKWALL, F.L.S. 149 



works, this volume on the spiders of Great Britain and Ireland 

 will yet go down to posterity, both in England and in foreign 

 countries, as one indispensable to every student of Araneology. 



It should be mentioned that in the investigation of the structure 

 of spiders Mr. Blackwall almost entirely lacked the help of a good 

 microscope, nearly all his work being effected by means of a 

 strong pocket-lens ; yet he was the first observer who ascertained 

 and used the minute and often complex structure of the male 

 palpi of spiders as a most important character for the determina- 

 tion of very similarly coloured and closely allied species. This 

 use of the palpi, although abundantly taken up since by all 

 continental araneologists, has never, I believe, been credited to 

 its discoverer as it should have been. 



Mr. Blackwall's labours in British Araneology would, doubtless, 

 have become more completely serviceable to students and collectors 

 if he had paid greater attention to the formation of a collection of 

 British spiders. His habit was, when new or rare species were found 

 and described, to place the type specimens in " magazine bottles," 

 all mixed together, with perhaps hundreds of others of common 

 species : this rendered it a very tedious matter to hunt out and 

 refer to any particular specimens, besides subjecting them to 

 injury and great liability to loss. Thus, as might be imagined, 

 some unique examples were not forthcoming at all for the 

 illustration of the 'History of British Spiders'; and very many 

 more, placed in the artist's hands for this purpose, were mislaid, 

 and eventually lost and destroyed during the illness of the latter, 

 above referred to. In extenuation of this want of care in 

 preserving his types, it should be remarked that the present very 

 satisfactory method of keeping spiders separated in glass-tubes 

 was unknown at the period of Mr. Blackwall's most active 

 operations, being due to Mr. R. H. Meade in 1853 (see 

 'Zoologist,' 1852, p. 3676). 



It will have been gathered from what has been said that 

 Mr. Blackwall's chief investigations were occupied with British 

 spiders ; descriptions, however, of numerous exotic species are 

 contained in some of the papers above recorded, but these have 

 never been brought into any systematic or connected form. 



Although Mr. Blackwall may (without the remotest idea or 

 intention of reproach) be classed among naturalists of the " old 

 school" of thought, yet his mind was of a truly fair and just 



