116 Description of an American Spider. 
reins for some years, to collectors, to observers, and even to mak- 
ers of species, in order to encourage them, and thus induce them 
to increase greatly the mass of materials. In this latter relation, 
no author has rendered more eminent services to science than 
Mr. Lea, i in his first volume, which is already in your library, and 
also in his second, of which I am going to exhibit to you briefly, 
the contents. Cu. Des Movutins. 
” 
Art. XIIl—Description of an American Spider, constituting a 
new sub-genus, of the.tribe Inequiiele of Latreille; by Prof. 
N. M. Hentz, Florence, Ala. 
[Read before the Yale Natural-History Society, April 28, 1841.] 
Tue genus Aranea of Linneus, like most of the genera estab- 
lished by that great man, is now in fact an extensive family of 
the animal kingdom. Walckenaer and Latreille subdivided it, 
and at once classified the numerous species known to them, in an 
admirable order. We may add the species since discovered and 
such subgenera as were not known to those authors, without ma- 
terially altering. their superstructure. But when the work is ac- 
complished, and all nature is described by man, the number of 
and Latreille could easily have doubled a - EeBlogns, if the 
number of species had been mentioned in the last edition of the 
Regne Animal. The writer of this paper, in the course of twe- 
ty years, has, at stolen hours, collected and described 147 species; 
but he is convinced. that fifty more could be added; as he has 
not explored the vast peninsula of Florida, nor any portion of Lou- 
isiana. Two hundred species, therefatl, would be a low esti- 
mate of echo number of spiders inhabiting the United States, net 
ludin: ss ; 
nt to more than two thousand, when the natural history of 
all countries is complete. It i is equally obvious that the rapidly 
increasing number of new when it is 
practicable to make them. The subgenns now proposed is indis- 
pensableyas the species cannot be classed under any existing ge0- 
