On EUROPEAN SPIDERS. 41 
blind forms (Stalita, Hadites)*). In contradistinction to the Saltigrade, 
Citigrade, Orbitelariæ ete., the sub-order Tubitelarie is extremely polymor- 
phous, and forms only a loosely connected combination of very heteroge- 
neous elements: it must be divided into many families and a great number 
of genera, and but few of these last seem to contain more than a very 
limited number of species. Transition-forms to almost all the other sub- 
orders are also to be found among the Tubitelariæ, which form as it were 
the chaos, from which the other more sharply defined and clearer types 
have been gradually developed. The forms are frequently coarse, ugly 
and clumsy, the colour dark and dusky; even their generally concealed and 
nocturnal habits indicate the lower rank of these animals. Among the dif- 
ferent families, into which this sub-order is divided, the first place must 
certainly be assigned to the Agalenoide; the remaining families would ap- 
pear to be in about the same stage of development, though probably the 
Filistatoide are the lowest. With them may be joined, as occupying an 
equally low position, the family Scytodoide in the sub-order Retitelarie. 
Whether we endeavour to arrange the families and genera of spiders 
in a continuous series, from that group which is looked upon as the most 
perfect, down to the lowest, or vice versa, or whether we arrange them 
after any other principle, we are soon met by the same difficulties which 
present themselves, whenever we endeavour to arrange in such a manner 
any class or order whatever of the productions of nature. We are soon obli- 
ged to abandon the hope of making the arrangement fully natural, i. e. 
such as to give a clear view of the more near or distant relationships of the 
various groups, and their thence following mutual similarities and dissimi- 
larities, and in the choice of the various combinations that offer themselves, 
we have, as WALCKENAER (Tabl. d. Aran., p. xu) happily expressed himself, 
often enough only “le choix des inconvénients”. The arrangement of the 
series itself is accordingly often enough tolerably unimportant, if one only 
take care in some other way to account for the natural relations which the 
various groups have to each other. As regards the larger groups of spiders, 
the sub-orders and the families, the reasons for the order of arrangement 
we have chosen will, we hope, easily be seen if one casts one’s eye on 
1) Even the so imperfectly described blind Antrobia [Anthrobia] monmouthia 
TELLKAMP (Beschr. einig. neuen in d. Mammuth-Hóhle aufgef. Gliederth., p. 318, Taf. 
VIII, fig. 13—17) probably belongs to this family, and not to the Territelarie as 
TELLKAMP supposes: Compare his description and figure of the animal's mandibles 
("Kieferklauen eingeschlagen") and maxillæ. 
Nova Acta Reg. Soc. Sc. Ups. Ser. III. 6 
