BRITISH SPECIES OP PHALANGIDEA OR HARVEST MEN. 195 



about with white points in somewhat transverse rows ; the normal 

 dorsal band on the abdomen (extending as usual into the thorax) 

 is strongly, but rather obtusely and irregularly angular, brown, 

 yellowish, or reddish, often margined, especially on the fore part, 

 with a more or less broken blackish or deep brown line frequently 

 this band is only traceable by its dark margins. It is truncated at 

 the 3rd segment from the end, but sometimes indistinctly and 

 brokenly continued. On each side of it, towards the hinder half of 

 the dorsal band, the surface is strongly suffused with dark brown, 

 becoming deeper as it runs back, so as quite to obliterate the 

 margins of the band. The under side is marked and mottled with 

 grey, brownish, and sometimes reddish. The abdomen is smooth 

 and has scarcely any perceptible denticulse, and those on the 

 cephalothorax are very few and small ; at the centre of the anterior 

 margin of the caput is a group of 7 or 8, of which the three 

 foremost form a transverse line, the middle one being the largest 

 and strongest, in advance of the others, directed slightly forwards, 

 and often with another smaller one just behind it. 



The eye-eminence is small, of a whitish colour, armed with two 

 rows of very small tubercular denticulse, few in number, and some, 

 often more or less, obsolete. The legs are rather short, yellowish, 

 strongly marked and clouded, but scarcely annulated, with brown 

 and reddish brown, fuinished with hairs, or fine bristles only none 

 amounting to spines or denticulse. Their relative length appears 

 to be 2, 4, 3, 1. The genital plate is somewhat sub-triangular, 

 rounded at the anterior end, in the centre of which is a small 

 circular indentation, looking like a small piece bitten out. 



Mons. Simon appears to have concluded this species to be identical 

 with Opilio tridens C. L. Koch, but having carefully considered the 

 description and figures given of the latter by Koch, I am convinced 

 the present species is distinct and most probably identical with the 

 0. epliippiger of M. Simon. It is in Dorsetshire a very abundant 

 species in woods and on low trees, bushes, heather, and herbage of 

 all kinds, as well as among moss and at roots of herbage, becoming 

 adult in late summer and autumn, ; I have also received it from 



