300 Bibliograpliical Notices. 



qxxires several iuward bends ; and in order to give the movement the 

 necessary softness and elasticity, without detriment to the carrying- 

 power of the limb, these bends must follow each other with short 

 intervals near both extremities of this line (/. e. just below the knee 

 and near the point of the foot). This arrangement therefore neces- 

 sitates that the first division under the knee should be much shorter 

 in spiders than in insects ; for whilst in insects, being plantigrade, 

 this division constitutes the only lever for carrying the weight of the 

 body, it forms in spiders, which are digitigrade, only the uppermost 

 section of a compou.nd lever, consisting of a succession of joints, 

 each carrying a part of the burden. But this first division below 

 the knee is the tibia, and it ought not to change name only because 

 its size and the manner in which it enters into the composition of 

 the leg are changed. That division of the leg, therefore, which 

 araneologists call ' patella ' is the true tibia, and what they call the 

 tibia is the first joint of the tarsus lifted up from the ground." 

 That is to say. Prof. Schiodte proposes that we should cease making 

 a mistake with regard to spiders similar to that popularly com- 

 mitted with regard to horses and other Mammalia, whose wrists are 

 called knees, and whose so-called shanks are merely the metacarpal 

 portion of the foot raised from the ground and simulating a tibia. 

 The genus StaVita was first established by Schiodte in his ' Specimen 

 Faunae Subterranese,' in which he described a series of remarkable 

 Insects, Arachnida, and Crustaceans, discovered by him in the caves 

 of Adelsberg in 1845, and wonderfully adapted in conformity with 

 their life in darkness and on the stalactites. Since then, the cave- 

 fauna has been carefully studied, without, however, adding much 

 to our knowledge. The present paper on Stalita has been caused by 

 ,a memoir of Count Keyserling in the ' Transactions of the I. R. Zoo- 

 logical and Botanical Society of Yienna' for 1862, on a new cave- 

 .spider (Hadites tegenaria) from Lessina, in Dalmatia, in which the 

 author, having also received some female Stalitas from that locality, 

 submits Schiodte's original account of Stalita to a severe criticism. 

 Alluding to two figures in the Spec. Faun. Subt., viz. fig. 3 c and 

 fig. 3 d, pi. 2, he says that they are intended to represent the same 

 parts of the mouth in the two sexes of Stalita tcenaria, but that the 

 ^iifierence is so great that Schiodte must have confounded two spe- 

 cies. He regrets that Schiodte has not described the female, but 

 only figured some parts of its mouth ; and, on the supposition that 

 his own Stalitas from Lessina belong to the same species as Schiodte's 

 from Adelsberg, he proceeds to give what he thinks a more accurate 

 description of these animals than is found in the ' Spec. Faun. Siibt.' 

 Unfortunately for his criticism, a reference to the figures in question 

 shows that they represent, not the same, but utterly different parts 

 of the mouth of the two sexes o£ StaJita tcenaria, fig. 3o being de- 

 scribed as "maxilla foeminas dextra cum labro palpoque maxillari, 

 supra, decies aiicta," and fig. 3 d as " maxilla maris sinistra, cum 

 labio sternali inferne visa, sedecies aucta ;" that is to say, one i-e- 

 presents the upper lip from above in the female, the other represents 

 the lower lip of the male from beneath, as indeed an able araneo- 



