PART II. 



DESCRIPTION OF GENERA AND SPECIES. 







AMONG Orbitelarise I include, with Thorell, all spiders that spin a 

 so called geometrical web. This may be arranged in a more or less circu- 

 lar plane, perpendicular or horizontal to the horizon, as the case 

 may be, which is the characteristic web of Epeira and many 

 fined other genera. Or it may be arranged in a circular plane, which 

 lacks one segment of greater or less size, usually in the upper 

 part of the snare, as in the case of Zilla and some species of Epeira. Or 

 again, it may consist simply of a single sector of a circle, as in the case 

 of Hyptiotes, the well known Triangle spider. I include among the fami- 

 lies of Orbitelarise, Uloborus, which makes a circular snare, suspended 

 horizontally, but without the usual Epeiiroid armature of viscid beads upon 

 the spiral lines. 



It does not seem that any spider whicli spins a snare of the general 

 character here described can be properly placed in any suborder other 

 than Orbitelariffi. Yet it may well be that there are Orbitelarise, 

 Habits even Epe'iroids in the strictest sense, which spin either no web 

 . , . " at all, or an irregular one ; just as (to quote ThorelPs compar- 

 ison) there are many Tubitelaria? that do not fabricate webs of 

 the form characteristic of that group. 1 Pachygnatha, for example, I 

 include with the Orbitelaria?, as is now done by the best araneologists ; 

 but, so far as is known, it makes no web, and appears to live underneath 

 stones and capture its prey after the fashion of the wandering spiders. 

 Of course, such a conclusion as this cannot be wondered at; for no one 

 will claim that a natural classification of animals can be based upon hab- 

 its alone, although in the case of spiders it certainly is true that there is 

 a quite constant relation between the natural habits and the natural order 

 of systematic life. 



Some of the older arachnologists still cling to the term Araneidea to 



denominate the order of true spiders ; but for the most part 



the Order *^ e wor< ^ Araneae is now thus used. This term was first proposed 



by Sundevall, in his Conspectus Arachnidum, in 1833. It was 



1 Thorell, Syn. Europ. Spid., page 599. 

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