470 On the Systematic Arrangement of British Spiders. 



damp situations, among which it constructs a dome-shaped cell 

 of white silk of a compact texture. In this cell, after distributing 

 upon its exterior surface the withered leaves of plants and closing 

 its entrance with a tissue of silk, the spider passes the winter 

 in a state of torpidity. During the summer and autumn the 

 female incloses in cells of a similar construction several subglobose 

 cocoons of yellow silk of a loose texture, measuring, on an average, 

 2 9 ^ths of an inch in diameter, each of which contains about 220 

 spherical eggs of a pale brown colour, agglutinated together in a 

 lenticular mass. On the 18th of July, 1846, both sexes of a 

 small insect belonging to the family Ichneumonidee, the female 

 of which is apterous, came out of a cocoon of this spider, and in 

 1842 I obtained specimens of the same insect from a cocoon of 

 Ep'eira umbratica. 



M. Walckenaer, in referring to an interesting fact recorded 

 by Lister, has strangely misinterpreted the meaning of that 

 author ; he states that " Lister a observe des larves d'Ichneumon 

 dans les nids de cette espece " {Ep'eira apoclisa) : " ces larves se 

 sont transformers sous ses yeux et ont pris leur vol dans Pair *' 

 (Hist. Nat. des Insect. Apt. t. ii. p. 65). The source of error 

 will be immediately perceived on perusing the following passage 

 cited from the ' Tractatus de Araneis ' of the English naturalist, 

 page 40 : — " In nido autem altero divulso triplicem, ut supra 

 dictum est, foetum observavi. Inter primum vero partum sex 

 aderant parvse Chrysalides sive Thecse teretes, solidse, utraque ex- 

 tremitate retusse, sublividae, id sc. genus, e quibus Muscat tripiles, 

 a Moufeto nostra sic dicta?, antiquis vero Ichneumones vespse ap- 

 pellate, excludi solent. Ex ipsis autem Araneolis natu majori- 

 bus, qui sc. horum vermiculorum voracitatem, dum in ovo, effu- 

 gerant, quotquot a me aeri expositi, protinus flla ejaculando 

 avolavere ; non injucundo sane spectaculo ! " 



The snares spun by Ep'eira apoclisa vary considerably in extent ; 

 upwards of 120,000 viscid globules are distributed upon the 

 elastic spiral line in a net of large dimensions, yet, under favour- 

 able circumstances, the time required for its completion seldom 

 exceeds forty minutes. 



In the ( Annals and Magazine of Natural History/ vol. xvii. 

 p. 79, I have asserted that the legs of all the males of this spe- 

 cies, whether British or foreign, which I had measured, were 

 shorter than those of the other sex ; since the publication of that 

 remark, however, I have met with several males whose legs ex- 

 ceeded in longitudinal extent those of the largest female in my 

 possession, showing that this spider varies as remarkably in its 

 proportions as it does in colour. 



