1877.) FROM DUKE-OF-YORK ISLAND ETC. 285 
the examples received had been subjected to so much maltreatment 
that the armature and clothing of the legs were almost destroyed. 
The palpi are moderate in length and strength, and are apparently 
similar in colour and armature to the legs. 
The fulces are tolerably long and strong, straight, perpendicular, 
rounded (in profile) towards their base in front, and similar in colour 
to the cephalothorax, though perhaps of a rather duller hue. 
The mazille are of normal form, of a deep blackish red-brown 
colour, with a pale anterior margin. 
The /abium is short, somewhat rounded at the apex, of an orange- 
yellow colour, paler at the apex, and with a deep reddish-brown 
patch on each side. ; 
The sternum is somewhat heart-shaped and of an orange-yellow 
colour, clothed with greyish hairs. 
The abdomen is large, of a rather flattened form, truncated before, 
broadest across the middle, behind which, on each side, are three 
largish rounded lobes giving the margins of the hinder extremity 
a strongly sinuous appearance; the hinder extremity is also lobi- 
form, and beneath it to the spinners, over which it projects con- 
siderably, the surface is strongly rugulose. The upperside is dark 
dull brown thickly covered with rather yellowish or whitish creta- 
ceous spots, as far as the second marginal lobes, behina which the 
colour is yellowish brown, spotted thinly with pale spots; the 
posterior half of the abdomen exhibited traces of variously shaped 
patches (apparently symmetrical in their uninjured state) of white, 
silky pubescence; the sides are a mixture of yellow-brown, dark 
brown, and black, spotted with yellowish, as well as with patches and 
lines of greyish hairs. ‘The underside is deep brown, with a broad 
yellow marginal band edged outside with a whitish border, which 
encircles the areas of the spinners, and has two lateral projecting por- 
tions on each side between the spinners and the genital aperture ; this 
last consists of two oval openings, one on each side, in front of a 
largish, transverse, oval, nearly black prominence. The fore half of 
the upperside has six impressed blackish spots, in three transverse 
pairs succeeding each other in a longitudinal direction. 
The above description has been collected from the fragments of 
four examples; it cannot, therefore, be looked upon as altogether 
satisfactory, though there will be found sufficient distinctive specific 
characters to render the species recognizable. In its perfect state it 
is probably a very beautiful spider, and is allied to, though quite 
distinct from the common South-American species Argiope argen- 
tata, Fabr. 
Family GASTERACANTHIDES. 
Genus GASTERACANTHA. 
GASTERACANTHA PANISICCA. 
Gasteracantha panisicca, Butler, Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. May 1873, 
p- 162, pl. iv. fig. 14. 
Two females of this distinct Spider were contained in Mr. Brown’s 
