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SPIDEES, BEITISH AND FOREIGN. 

 [By the Rev. J. E. Vize, M.A., F.R.M.S.] 



In undertaking to read a paper on the subject of spiders to the Woolhope 

 Club, I confess to have been utterly ignorant at the time of the fact that already 

 our members had received a paper from Mr. Lane upon " British Spiders," pub- 

 lished in the year 1874 Transactions, p. 80. Both papers are utterly independent 

 of each other, and I have purposely avoided reading what Mr. Lane says, so that 

 the same ground may be avoided as much as possible. 



As regards the subjects to be treated in the paper, they are numerous, of 

 course, and may be arranged under the different parts of the body of the animal 

 itself, and the means adopted to keep themselves alive. We must have a little to 

 say about spiders which are not British, and their preservation for examination 

 for the cabinet, &c., and their classification. Let us begin with their breathing 

 apparatus. The breathing apparatus of spiders is very well adapted to its 

 purpose. Ours is in a compound form, through the nose by the two nostrils : we 

 have also another arrangement by the mouth for admitting air to the lungs, and 

 so aerating the blood. Insects, many of them, such as flies, bees, wasps, cater- 

 pillars, maggots, &c., have them down both sides of their bodies. Air is admitted 

 by means of openings, called spiracles, to the trachaeal system, which system is 

 most complicated and beautiful, as may be seen in the water beetles and silkworm 

 larvae. By this means the whole body is pervaded with just the quantity of air 

 necessary for it, although, be it remembered, spiracles are not found in the heads 

 of insects. This is the reason why, if you cut off the head of a fly or wasp, it does 

 not cease breathing as we should do. It breathes almost as well as ever, and 

 sufifera from inability to get food, and also from blindness. Plants breathe also 

 through their stomata, which are openings on the cuticle of the leaf, sometimes 

 only above, sometimes only below, as in the cherry laurel, sometimes both above 

 and below, as in the yucca, which has 40,000 on the upper side and 40,000 on the 

 under side, thus giving 80,000 stomates on a square inch. The lilac has 160,000 

 on the lower surface alone. The spiders breathe by means of membranous plates, 

 placed within the abdomen in two clusters. They are something like the gills of 

 fishes, or plates closed together like the leaves of a book with irregular openings. 



The eyes of the spiders are very wonderful things, and certainly not what 

 we should expect. Most creatures, you know, have two eyes and most useful they 

 are. They are placed in the head in a tolerably prominent part, beautifully 

 shielded from dust by the eyebrows above, and by a pair of eyelids tipped with a 

 number of eye-lashes below. The eye-lids, as you are aware, are duriug the time 

 of our using our eyes, that is to say when we are not asleep, constantly meeting 

 each other and separating from each other, so that the eyes may be lubricated and 

 kept moist, otherwise they would become dry and contract, and we should soon be 

 in great pain from the agony of blindness coming on. But about the spider's 

 eyes. If they were placed like ours are, they would be damaged and wounded 



