214 REV. O. V. CAMBRIDGE ON THE [Feb. 20, 



From the above analysis it will be seen that 19 families, com- 

 prising 59 genera, are represented. The distribution of genera into 

 families has been made somewhat tentatively ; unsatisfied with ex- 

 isting systematic arrangements, I have given the above from a scheme 

 drawn up in MS. several years since, but of which, as a whole, 

 opportunity has not yet offered for the publication. The Spiders 

 of the family Salticides have been for the present included under 

 one genus (Sallicus, Latr.) ; but in the details and descriptions a 

 notification will be appended of the generic divisions adopted by M. 

 Simon, but which are some of them, as it seems to me, scarcely 

 tenable as distinct genera. The families most numerously repre- 

 sented are the Drassides (55 species) aud Salticides (62 species), 

 the two together monopolizing 117 species, or nearly half of the 

 whole number met with. Both these groups consist of Spiders pe- 

 culiarly fitted for an arid, sterile, stony land — the Drassides being 

 found almost exclusively beneath stones and pieces of detached rock, 

 while the Salticides in general delight to jump about and disport in 

 bright sunshine on the most barren and stony places, or among the 

 stunted shrubs and flowers with which such spots are sometimes 

 scantily clothed. Of the whole number of determinable Spiders 

 discovered (2/8 species), 151 species appear to have been hitherto 

 undescribed, some few others having been described from European 

 examples, by other arachnologists, since the collection was formed ; 

 forty-three out of the fifty-five species of Drassides, and twenty-nine 

 of the sixty-two species of Salticides, appear to be undescribed. This 

 great richness in undescribed species is easily accounted for by the 

 fact that (as I believe) scarcely any Spiders have ever before been 

 collected in those regions of the world. The general character of 

 the Araneidea of Palestine and Syria is strictly European ; few, 

 even of those found on the plains of the Jordan, give any idea of 

 a transition to a tropical fauna ; all the known genera and most 

 of the more special groups have European representatives ; and the 

 Spiders of the two new genera characterized present nothing in form 

 or structure which would make them unlikely to be met with in 

 suitable localities in the south and south-eastern parts of Europe. 

 Many species of the Spiders in the present collection were met with 

 in Egypt in 18b"4, especially of the family Drassides; the Egyptian 

 collection, however, remains yet to be thoroughly worked out and 

 collated with that made in Syria and Palestine. It may perhaps be 

 interesting to some readers to state that the route followed was from 

 Jaffa by Ramleh, El Birriyeh, and Kuriet-el-Nab to Jerusalem, 

 thence to Jericho and the plains of the Jordan, from Jericho by 

 Marsaba and the pools of Solomon to Hebron, returning thence by 

 Bethlehem to Jerusalem, and then via Bethel, Nablous, Samaria, 

 Jenin, the plains of Esdraelon, Jezreel, and Nain to Nazareth ; from 

 Nazareth the route lay across the Kishon to Mount Carmel and 

 Haifa, thence to Kefr Menda and Cana-el-Jelil (Cana of Galilee), 

 from Cana to Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee, thence by Tel Hum 

 and Safed to Kedes, Hunin, and Banias, from Banias by Hasbeiya 

 and llasheiya over the skirts of Mount Hermon to Damascus, from 



