M. T. Thorell on Aranea lobata. 187 
perhaps the splendid Argiope Briinnichii*, in the arachnoid 
fauna of the south of Europe, now even attaiming the unknown 
northern limit of that fauna. 
When Pallas published the first or Latin edition of his 
above-named work, he was ignorant of the habitat of A. 
lobata, and unfortunately advanced a supposition that the 
species was probably the same as Petiver’s Araneotdes Cap. 
Jasciata lutescens, &e.t. It is, beyond a doubt, this circum- 
stance only which has caused later writers to overlook the 
correspondence of Olivier’s A. sericea and Pallas’s A. lobata ; 
for, although the description and figures which Pallas has left 
are not particularly well marked, they are sufficiently accurate 
to enable any one looking at them with unprejudiced eyes to 
recognize in A. lobata its identity with A. sericea. 
We have only to recollect that the examples which Pallas had 
before him were preserved in spirit: in such examples the silky 
down which covers the body is not apparent, whereas one easily 
perceives the two dark longitudinal bands and the large black 
transverse spots in front of the petiolus conspicuous in Pallas’s 
representation, as also the “line bis gemine fuscescentes 
supra apicem abdominis subtrilobum longitudinales” of which 
he speaks, which marks are, on the contrary, in living or dried 
examples, more or less hidden by the silk-like covering of hair. 
Pallas states (loc. cit.) that he met with several specimens 
of his A. lobata “in Museo Academiz Petropolitane:” pro- 
bably they came from Southern Russia, where this spider had 
been already found in 1768 by Lepechin. His “‘ Aranea se- 
noculata thorace depresso, abdomine exovato globoso lobato, 
punctis in dorso 4 nigris” t{ (which received from Gmelin, in 
Linn. Syst. Nat. ed. 13, the name A. argentea), is in fact in- 
disputably nothing else than a variety of the common A. se77- 
cea, Which also was later observed in South Russia (Crimea) 
by Al. v. Nordmann§. 
But, should there yet remain, in spite of the agreement of 
the two descriptions, any doubt as to the European origin of 
* Aranea Briinnichit, Scop. (Annus V. Hist.-Nat.: 1772) = Aranea 
fasciata, Oliv. (1789) 1. Epeira (Nephila) fasciata Auct. rec. 
+ Petiver, ‘Gazophylacium Nature et Artis,’ i. tab. 12. f. 11; Catalogus 
classicus et topicus, p. 3, No. 440. 
t Lepechin, ‘Tagebuch der Reise durch verschiedene Provinzen des 
Russischen Reiches in den Jahren 1768 u. 1769.’ Uebers. von C. W. 
Haase. Th. i. p. 316, Taf. 16. fig. 2(1774). (The first part of the Russian 
original was printed in 1771). 
§ “In the Crimea I have sat for a whole hour opposite the web of the 
beautiful Argyopes sericeus, the large female in the centre, the small male 
at the edge of the wide-meshed web.”—Nordmann, “ Erstes Verzeichniss 
der in Finnland und Lappland gefundenen Spinnen, Aranee,” in Bidra, 
till Finlands Naturkiinnedom, Etnografi och Statistik, viii. p. 18 (1868), 
