
A NEW MARINE SPIDER. 17 
Mandible nearly naked above ; basal segment a little less than length of 
carapace, armed below with two teeth behind and six farther back, in front ; 
fangs not sinuate, the inner edge finely serrulate. 
Legs.—First, much the longest, more than three times the length of the 
carapace ; fourth, a little longer than second; third, shortest ; all covered 
with a clothing of fine erect, or obliquely upstanding hairs, intermixed with 
which, especially towards the extremities of the legs, are some curiously 
hooked hairs ; at the ends of the protarsi of the second, third, and fourth, 
the hairs form a thickish dark coloured cluster. 
Abdomen and ventral surface of cephalothorax covered with a thick 
coating of fine upstanding hairs. 
Vulva consists of a plate which ends behind, in a triangularly pointed 
process ; in front, it is deeply excavated, the excavation being surmounted 
anteriorly by a conspicuous arch, from each side of which a stout, though 
short, process projects inwards over the hollow. 
Measurements in millimetres.—Total length of body, 11 ; length of 
carapace, 5°3 ; width of head, 3°3; length of basal segment of mandible, 5 ; 
length of first leg 19, of second 14, of third 12, and of fourth 15-5. 
Locality.—Wynberg, 8. Africa, in the interstices of the masses of 
Tubicola, within tide mark. 
One other species apparently referable to this genus has been recorded 
from 8. Africa. This was described by Mr. O. P.-Cambridge as Lobsonia* 
formidabilis (P.Z.S. 1890, p. 625, pl. liii, fig. 5). Nothing was recorded of its 
habits. No doubt, however, as Mr. Cambridge suggested, the species will 
prove to be marine. P. formidabilis and P. tubicola may be separated, 
according to the description of the former} by the following features :— 
a. Legs entirely destitute of spines (according to Cambridge). 
formidabilis, Cambr. 
b. First leg unspined ; second, third, and fourth with three strong 
spines at the extremity of the protarsi beneath ; tarsi of third 
and fourth with about half-a-dozen spines, arranged somewhat 
irregularly in pairs ; tibie of third and fourth, with an inferior 
apical pair of long slender spines. 
tubicola, sp. 7. 
Mr. Abraham has communicated, in a letter to the Director of Museums, 
the following interesting account of this spider :—‘ About a year ago, or 
more, an old friend of mine, Dr. Becker, was paying me a visit, and we went 
to the seaside to collect sea-weeds. While on the shore my friend asked me 
if I had ever found spiders living in the sea. I had not. He then asked me 
to keep a look-out in the tubes of Zubicola. I soon found a mass of these 
structures, and, breaking off a large piece, I brought it out of the sea. We 
then began to break up the mass of tubes, and soon found two spiders, which 
were what my friend called, sea-spiders. Now, since that time, I have made a 
study of these spiders, and have kept them in my marine aquarium, and have 
become familiar with them. I must now, in brief, tell you one or two things 
of interest. First, the spiders can always be found in the tube masses of 
Lubicola. This formation is invariably covered by the sea at high tide, and 

* In the Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (6) xvi, p. 143, 1895, I pointed out that the name 
Robsonia, Cambr., is synonymous with the much earlier Dandridgea, White, and that 
the latter is, in all probability, synonymous with Desis, as I here consider it to be. 
t+ In the following sentence published by Mr. Cambridge (loc. cit. p. 626), ‘‘ in the 
present species [formidabilis] the interval between the central pair [of eyes of the 
posterior row] is nearly, if not quite, double that between each and the lateral eye next 
to it,” the word double is an obvious slip for half. 
