THE ANNALS 



AND 



MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



[FOURTH SERIES.] 

 No. 94. OCTOBER 1875. 



XXXI. — Notes and Descriptions of some new and rare British 

 Spiders. By the Rev. O. P. Cambridge, M.A., C.M.Z.S. 



[Plate VIII.] 



In his very able work on European Spiders, published in 

 1869-70, Dr. T. Thorell notices, as a remarkable fact, that 

 the number of known spiders of Great Britain and Ireland 

 no more than very nearly equalled those of Sweden and Nor- 

 way — 304 species in the former and 308 in the latter 

 countries ; and he suggests that the British Islands ought, 

 from their more southerly position and warmer climate, to 

 possess a richer spider-fauna than the peninsula of Sweden 

 and Norway. Dr. Thorell, as a subsequent note attests, was 

 only acquainted at that time with Mr. Blackwall's work on 

 the Spiders of Great Britain and Ireland — being then unaware 

 that since the publication of that work in 1864 numerous 

 new species had been recorded, in various natural-history 

 journals, as indigenous (chiefly) to England. 



At the present time the number of known British spiders 

 (including those here described as new) amounts to 474 ; 

 while every new district searched, and even some long- and 

 well-worked localities, still reveal species not before known to 

 be British. Not only are Devonshire and Cornwall almost 

 an untried district, but very few spiders have yet been authen- 

 ticated in Ireland, whose comparatively mild and humid cli- 

 mate is probably favourable to the existence of many spiders 

 not met with in England and Scotland. Of the few spiders 



Ann. &Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 4. Vol xvi. 17 



