188 M. T. Thorell on Aranea lobata. 



A, lohataj and its identity with A. sertcea which is dependent 

 upon that fact, it will be sufficient and conclusive to consult 

 the German edition of the Spicil. Zool. fasc. 9, translated and 

 revised by Pallas himself, and printed in 1777 under the 

 title ^ Naturgeschichte merkwiirdiger Thiere,' 9te Sammlung, 

 pp. 71, 72. From the account therein given of A. lohata we 

 extract the following : — 



" .... the true country of the spider the description of 

 which I have already furnished from preserved specimens. 

 .... I have met with it in the warm southern parts about the 

 Wolga, and on the Upper Irtisch, and have indeed found it 



already perfectly developed in the month of May It has 



also been noticed by my lamented friend Prof. Falk in the 

 corners of houses in Zariczan ; and Prof. Lepechin, who has 

 described and figured it in the first part of his Russian Voyage 

 (p. 395, pi. 16. fig. 2), found it under the hollow bark of a tree, 

 brooding over its eggs " {loc. cit. p. 72). 



Thus we find, — first, that Pallas expressly gives the south 

 of Russia (both in Europe and Asia) as the country of A. lo- 

 hata ; and, secondly, that, according to Pallas, Lepechin's 

 above-named Aranea (" abdomine .... lobato," &c.) is the 

 same species as the A. lohataj Pallas. 



Both Pallas and Nordmann in the above-cited passage give 

 us every reason to suppose that this species is as far from 

 being one of the rarer forms of spider in the south of Russia 

 as it is indeed in Italy and the south of France. 



Attention having been once called to the matter, no one 

 would henceforth think of believing Pallas's A. lohata to be 

 the same as Petiver's " Araneoides capensis " from the Cape 

 of Good Hope ; also Olivier's specific name sertcea must give 

 place to the much older one of lohata j and the species be 

 henceforth known as Argiojpe lohata (Pallas). 



Fabricius adopts A. lohata in the ^ Species Insectorum ' 

 (1781), after Pallas (Spicil. Zool.) ; and while he cites this 

 author, he includes also, but with a query, Petiver's species 

 from the Cape among the synonyms, doubtless on the ground 

 of Pallas's previously hazarded guess concerning the habitat 

 of A. lohata. He does the same in the ^ Mantissa Insectorum' 

 (1787). For the habitat of the species, Fabricius, in both 

 these works, has candidly left a blank. But some years later 

 (1793), in the ^ Entomologia Systematica' (tom. ii. p. 407), 

 while giving the same diagnosis and synonymy for A. lohata 

 as in the ^ Species Insectorum,' he says, " Habitat ad Caput 

 Bonse Spei," showing that he now abandoned his former un- 

 certainty as to the country of this species, and, of his own 

 accord, regarded it as exclusively exotic — an assumption 



