A HISTORY OF SUSSEX 

 ARACHNIDA 



Spiders, etc. 



No great research has been made in connection with members 

 of this order in the county of Sussex, so that it is not possible to con- 

 sider the following account of the spider-fauna of the district under 

 consideration in any respect complete. 



It will doubtless prove as rich a locality when thoroughly well 

 worked as others of similar physical characters and geological formation. 

 One is however unable to point particularly to any one locality as more 

 likely to repay research than another, though the country districts, 

 with river banks and meadows, firwoods and oak and hazel plantations 

 will be found to provide abundant species in suitable seasons. 



As a rule, wild uncultivated areas are much more fertile in spider 

 forms than those that are highly cultivated. Yet even in the latter 

 case, where isolated districts of wild growth and forest land occur, with 

 cultivated land on all sides, the former are often found to be more prolific 

 than even large tracts of untilled forest. 



Of the 1 1 8 species of spiders recorded none are peculiar to the 

 district, though several are worthy of special mention : Atypus affinis, 

 Dysdera crocota, Ccelotes atropos, Thanatus formicinus and Metopobactrus pro- 

 mimilus. 



The greater part of the species recorded were collected by Mr. 

 F. P. Smith of Islington ; others by Rev. O. Pickard-Cambridge and 

 Rev. J. Harvey-Bloom. 



In cases where the generic or specific name quoted is not that under 

 which the spider has usually been recognized in the works of English 

 authors, a note has been added calling attention to the fact. 



ARANEiE 



MTGALOMORPHM 



ATYPID^ 



Spiders with eight eyes, four lung books, and three tarsal claws. 



I . Atypus affinis, Eichwald the lower end in a slightly enlarged cell, where 



Hastings (F.P.S.) ^'''^ egg-sac is formed and the young are 



hatched, and tended by the female. The 

 Adult in May, June and October. upper end of the silk lining is prolonged for 



This is the only example of the Mygalo- about three inches beyond the extremity of 

 morpha found in the British Islands. Though the burrow, forming a loose tube, closed at 

 belonging to the same sub-order as the well- the end, and either lymg on the surface of the 

 known trap-door spiders of the south of soil, woven amongst the roots of heather and 

 Europe and other tropical and sub-tropical herbage, or hanging down free, according to 

 regions, distinguished from the Arachnomorpha the nature of the surroundings, 

 by the possession of two pairs of pulmonary Mr. Enock reports that the spider does not 



organs, or lung books, and by the vertical leave this retreat in search of prey, but waits 

 movement of the mandibles, these spiders in the slack portion of the tube lying outside 

 make no trap-door at all. the burrow until some insect sets foot upon 



The retreat consists of a long tunnel, half this silken, purse-like structure. Instantly 

 an inch in diameter and from sexen to nine tlie fangs of the spider's mandibles are struck 

 inches long, burrowed in the soil, and lined through the walls of the tube, the insect 

 throughout with white silk, terminating at seized and dragged into the burrow through a 



238 



