Preface 



OPIDERS MAKE UP A CONSIDERABLE 



portion of the animal life of the vast and diversified land that is 

 North America. That general knowledge of them is relatively 

 meager must be attributed to the circumstance of size, rather than 

 to inferiority in either importance or genuine interest. By means of 

 size, and also of sound, birds, mammals, and vertebrate animals mo- 

 nopolize the stage and divert attention. Yet only a slight change in 

 perspective will bring into view a microcosm of tiny creatures that, 

 hidden away in leafy jungles or unseen in miniature forests under 

 foot, live lives of unbelievable strangeness and complexity. To bring 

 this microcosm into sharp focus for the general reader is the prime 

 purpose of this book. 



Our American spider heritage is a large and diversified fauna 

 commensurate in importance with the age and size of the continent 

 itself. Proclaiming this heritage is a large and rewarding body of 

 literature created by students during more than one hundred and 

 fifty years of enthusiastic devotion. At the beginning one would 

 mention the name of John Abbot, who, as early as 1776, began the 

 study of spiders and other animals in the region around Savannah, 

 Georgia. It is to be regretted that his fine paintings and accompany- 

 ing notes were never published, as were those of the birds, butter- 

 flies, and moths for which he became justly famous. Thereafter, 

 with Nicholas Marcellus Hentz, whose first contribution appeared 

 in 1821, began a line of investigators (H. C. McCook, T. H. Mont- 

 gomery, G. W. and E. G. Peckham, J. H. Comstock, and J. H. 

 Emerton, to mention only a few) which has terminated in that out- 

 standing living American devotee of Arachne, Alexander Petrunke- 

 vitch, and in a growing circle of younger workers. The contribution 

 of Americans to world araneology has been a striking one, but we 

 have profited in even greater measure by the energy and genius of 

 students from other lands, foreigners in language only. 



