164 BRITISH SPECIES OF PHALANGIDEA OR HARVEST MEN. 



the most part easily seen. In the spiders the fore part, or 

 cephalothorax, is nearly always visibly distinct from the hinder 

 part, or abdomen, to which it is joined by a distinct pedicle. In 

 the Harvest-Men the cephalothorax and abdomen fit close up to each 

 other, and are in fact united throughout their whole breadth, looking, 

 to an ordinary observer, like one homogeneous piece, the division 

 between them being, however, always traceable by a, more or less 

 deep, transverse groove, or indentation. In most spiders the abdo- 

 men is developed to a much larger size than the cephalothorax, and 

 is always furnished with spinning organs spinners while that of 

 the Harvest-Man* has no spinning organs, and, as a rule, appears 

 to have shrunk up and become in many cases as small as it could 

 possibly become ; the portions, or segments, of which it consists, 

 especially the three posterior ones, having become contracted or 

 crushed up into each other as though by some strong attraction 

 from in front or pressure from behind. Most people will, no 

 doubt, call to mind one of our most abundant of the Harvest- 

 Men, whose little nearly circular body, smaller than a small pea, and 

 poised, as it were, between its exceedingly long, slender, thread- 

 like legs, is thus carried suspended, with great quickness and 

 facility, over the rough grass and herbage of our fields, woods, and 

 hedges in early autumn. This is Leiobunum rotundum Latr. (or 

 possibly L. Blackwallii Meade) a closely allied species. 



To go on, however, with their differences from spiders. The 

 eyes of all known British Spiders are 6 or 8 in number, while those 

 of the Harvest-Men are 2 only, and these are placed on the sides 

 of an eminence near the centre of the fore part, or caput, also 

 in spiders the cuticle of the abdomen is continuous, while in the 

 Harvest-Men it is divided into transverse segments, which are often 

 only traceable by a slightly indented line, though sometimes by folds 

 (in the epidermis), showing the pristine division of the abdomen 

 into distinctly divided segments. In the adult male spiders, again, 

 the palpi always end with a congeries of corneous lobes and spines, 



* Spinning organs have, however, been discovered in the Cyphophtlud- 

 midcc, but their use and economy are not known. 



