xv CLASSIFICATION AOI 
Hersilia includes nine species native to Africaand Asia. Tama 
is the only genus represented in the New World, two of its species 
being found in South America, while others inhabit Africa, Asia, 
and Austraha. Another genus, Hersiliola, is principally African, 
but extends into Spain. 
Fam. 21. Pholcidae.—This is another very well - marked 
family. The most striking peculiarity of its members is the 
possession of extremely long and thin legs, the metatarsi being 
especially elongated, and the tarsi furnished with several false 
articulations, 
The eyes are also very characteristic. They are usually eight 
in number, the two anterior median eyes being black, while the 
other six are white, and arranged in lateral groups of three, some- 
times on prominences or stalks. The abdomen is sometimes nearly 
globular, but more often long and cylindrical. Most of the 
genera, which, including several new genera lately established by 
Simon, number more than twenty, are poor in species, but enjoy 
a very wide distribution. This is explained by the fact that 
many of them live in cellars and outhouses. This is the case 
with the genus Pholcus, of which the sole English species Ph. 
phalangioides is a perfect nuisance in buildings in the most 
southern parts of the country, “ spinning large sheets of irregular 
webs in the corners and angles, and adding to them year by 
year.” ' Other genera are Artema (Africa, South Asia, Polynesia, 
America), which includes the largest examples, and Spermophora, 
a six-eyed genus whose few species are widely distributed. 
Fam. 22. Theridiidae.—Sedentary spiders, usually with 
feeble chelicerae and relatively large abdomen. Snare irregular. 
The Theridiidae, as here understood, are a very extensive 
family, and more than half the British spiders (about 270 
species) are included within it. This family and the next present 
unusual difficulties of treatment, and there is great divergence 
of opinion as to the most satisfactory way of dealing with them. 
This is chiefly due to the fact that, notwithstanding an infinite 
variation of facies, important points of structure are wonderfully 
uniform throughout both the two groups, while any differences 
that do occur are bridged over by intermediate forms which merge 
into each other. 
Simon ” has become so impressed with the difficulty of drawing 
1 Pickard-Cambridge, Spiders of Dorset, p. 77. 2 Hist. Nat. des Ar. i. p. 594. 
VOL. IV 2D 
