282 



NATURE 



\Feb. lo, 1876 



tion (somewhat like that of the abdomen of the Phalan- 

 gidea) in the shape of an encircling furrow towards the 

 hinder extremity of the abdomen of some species of 

 Lathrodectus : and he refers to the known fact of the seg- 

 mentation of the abdomen in the etnbryo of spiders 

 (ClaparMe, " Recherches sur I'Evolution des Araigndes ")• 

 Still plainer evidences of obsolete segments have been 

 previously noted in Erigofie corrupts, Cambr. (Proc. 

 Zool. Soc, March 1875, p. 214, PI. XXIX. Fig. 21), as 

 well as in some other species of the same genus. 



Were it not for points thus incidentally raised, and 

 some of which have been above noticed, Dr. Thorell's 

 present work would be of little interest except to the 

 arachnological specialist; by such, however, it will be 

 hailed as an important and valuable addition to the lite- 

 rature upon European spiders j while a more general in- 

 terest is imparted to it by the topics here commented 

 upon. 



It is one of the disadvantages attending the publica- 

 tion of papers on natural history in periodical journals 

 that such papers are more or less inaccessible to those 

 who either do not possess the journal, or who live at a 

 distance from a library containing it ; and this disadvan- 

 tage is heightened when a series of papers, extending, per- 

 haps, over many years, is thus issued, on any one subject. 

 Araneologists are therefore greatly indebted to the editor 

 of Prof. Hentz's writings, for clearing away a disadvan- 

 tage of this kind, and one which has been much felt for a 

 considerable period. 



Prof. Nicolas Marcellus Hentz, a Frenchman by birth, 

 but obliged to fly his native country at the downfall of the 

 first Napoleon, devoted much time and labour in the 

 United States, the land of his adoption, to the study and 

 collecting of spiders. After having published some few 

 short papers upon them, at length, in 1841, he brought 

 together the whole of his notes and drawings, publishing 

 them in a series of papers in the Journal of the Boston 

 Society of Natural History, at intervals from that year to 

 the year 1850. These papers, eight in number, and con- 

 tained in three vols. — iv.,v.,and vi. — of the Boston Journal, 

 together with two or three other papers previously pub- 

 lished, and an unpublished ^ supplement, have now been 

 collected and given to the public in the present volume. 



Considerable difficulties attended the attainment of this 

 result, especially in regard to the plates ; the stones from 

 which the lithographic plates were taken having been 

 destroyed and several of the copper plates lost. The 

 science of photography, in the shape of the Albert-type 

 process, has, however, enabled the editor very success- 

 fully to overcome this difficulty, and the facsimile plates 

 produced by it are only second to those of the original 

 papers. In order to enable araneologists to refer to and 

 quote the exact page and plate of the original papers, care 

 has been taken to preserve the old pagination by numbers 

 (within brackets) inserted in the text, and to retain the 

 original numbering of the plates alongside of the numbers 

 referring to the present volume. The matter of the sup- 

 plement has been worked into the different descriptions, 

 wherever it happened to belong, though still kept sepa- 

 rate by means of brackets. With this exception, and the 



' This supplement was published, however, latterly, under the editorial 

 care of Mr. S. H. Scudder, in Proc. Best. Soc. Nat. Hist, xi., pp. toi— iii, 

 PI. I, 2, 1867. 



addition of some short notes (referring chiefly to the 

 dimensions and the occurrence of the species) by Mr. J. 

 H. Emerton, Hentz's papers are thus now reproduced 

 just as they were originally written and pubhshed by him- 

 self. 



With regard to the subject matter of this volume, the 

 author appears to have relied more upon the accuracy of 

 his drawings (which were fully coloured, and said to be 

 artistic and of great beauty) than to his descriptions for 

 making known the spiders he discovered ; his descrip- 

 tions consequently are very 'meagre and unsatisfactory, 

 while the engraved plates 'cannot be considered to do 

 much justice to the original drawings, if the latter were, 

 as above mentioned, artistic and beautiful ; the figures in 

 the plates, though neat, being for the most part very flat 

 and inartistic. It is not meant by this that their utility 

 in the determination of the spiders delineated is much, if 

 at all, impaired ; on the contrary, it will probably be 

 found for the most part sufficiently easy for collectors to 

 determine their captures by reference to the figures given. 

 Every description is followed by some observations on 

 the habits and economy of the spider, showing that the 

 author's great pleasure was not merely in the collecting 

 and depicting, but also in observing, the objects of his 

 pursuit. 



The system of classification adopted by Prof. Hentz 

 is now a matter of quite secondary importance ; though 

 some (probably most) of the genera which he characterised 

 as new, will stand ; and so perhaps will the greater number 

 of his species. The total number — 254— of spiders de- 

 scribed and figured must be considered small compared 

 with the wide area over which they were collected ; the 

 larger number, however, appear to have been found in 

 North Carolina and Alabama, with some few from Massa- 

 chussetts and Georgia. A little vigorous collecting in 

 those localities will doubtless soon lead to the identifica- 

 tion of most, if not of all, of the spiders contained in Prof. 

 Hentz's papers, and, with even less doubt, will greatly 

 add to their number. 



In thus speaking of Hentz's labours as an araneologist 

 in the United States, it must not be forgotten that the 

 late Dr. Abbott left behind him, many years ago, an 

 extensive series of beautiful drawings of Georgian and 

 other North American spiders ; all of these were named 

 and shortly described by Baron- Walckenaer in vols. L 

 and ii. of his " Insectes Apteres " (Paris, 1837). The 

 British Museum possesses a set of these drawings, but 

 whether this is the original set from which Walckenaer's 

 descriptions were derived, or whether (as we have under- 

 stood) his descriptions were made from another set r'ven 

 to him by Dr. Abbott, and now existing in one of the 

 public institutions of Paris, appears to be uncertain. 

 At any rate the set of drawings in the British Museum 

 Library bears every appearance of being an original, even 

 if a duplicate, set ; and it would perhaps be feasible, as 

 well as worth while, now to publish these drawings as a 

 whole, with the names and descriptions given by Walck- 

 enaer. Such a volume, in conjunction with that formed by 

 Hentz's papers, would represent very nearly all that has 

 been done in the past to North American Araneology, 

 and would form a secure foundation and starting-point 

 for the efforts of the future. 



It must not be omitted to mention that the two la?t I 



