I C>f) AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWORK. 







to existing species, and can be satisfactorily placed under the published 

 genera." However, we have not been able to trace specific identity. In 

 this antediluvian and umber forest now lying beneath the North Sea waves, 

 and along the shores of this Tertiary Amber Bay, we can readily picture to 

 ourselves vast numbers of Coleoptera burrowing in the ground, boring in 

 trees, flying among the brandies, pursuing the same round of habits witli 

 which we are to-day familiar. The Homoptera are represented by the 

 Cicada, who doubtless then as now filled the forest with his piping notes. 

 Dragon-flies hunted their insect prey, and Libellula and Agrion carried 

 havoc among the entomological hosts, as they do to-day in the neighbor- 

 hood of Philadelphia. Ichneumon flics doubtless exercised their parasitic 

 habits upon victims like their modern hosts. Wasps of various sorts 

 dragged numberless spiders, flies, and other insects into their mud daub 

 nests to feed their voracious grubs. 



Ants and bees were present in great numbers. Among the Orthoptera, 

 cockroaches, locusts, grasshoppers, and many other genera were represented. 

 Among the Lepidoptera such well known genera as Papilio, Tinea, and 

 Sphinx might have been seen; and minute Diptera, some of which, at 

 least, were similar to those of modern Europe, everywhere abounded in field 

 and forest. We may, therefore, conclude that the picture of this submarine 

 antediluvian amber forest, which we can draw from the facts presented 

 to us by the entomologist, botanist, and geologist, would not largely differ 

 from that of the midsummer aspect of the forests of the Adirondack Mount- 

 ains in New York, where various sorts of pine trees reach immense pro- 

 portions, and the balsam especially abounds, forming the fragrant upholstery 

 for the beds of those who bivouac or camp along the lakes and rivers of 

 that favorite region of American summer tourists. In the midst some 

 such scenes, and surrounded by similar insect hordes, the aranead ancestors 

 of our existing spiders dwelt. The reader may know just how they looked. 

 They are embalmed for us in the liquid resin secreted in the forests of 

 Amber Island and Amber Bay. 



On the accompanying full page engraving I have presented a few selec- 

 tions from the figures of amber spiders, as given in Berendt's noble work. 

 Figs. 389 and 390 represent Orbweavers of the genus Zilla. The 

 Lineweavers are represented by Figs. 395 and 398, Ero and The- 

 ridium. The Tubeweavers by Figs. 393 and 397, Segestria and 

 Clubiona. The Saltigrades, by the unmistakable Eresus at Fig. 394, and 

 the Laterigrades by Philodromus and Syphax, Figs. 39G and 399. It is at 

 once manifest by a glance at these drawings that in their general facies not 

 only, but in their detailed characteristics, they show a close resemblance to 

 corresponding genera as they are known to-day. 



This resemblance, however, to existing genera (as far as now known) is 

 not always so apparent from the figures presented by Bcrcndt. For ex- 

 ample, Archea paradoxa, which is represented much enlarged in both the 



