18/2.] SPIDERS OF PALESTINE AND SYRIA. 221 



voured to escape. M. Simon is of opinion that (Ecobius should be 

 placed in the same family as Hersilia, and removed from close 

 proximity to Glotho ; the relationship, however, between the two 

 former appears to me more than doubtful, while between Clotho and 

 QZcohius there is not only a most marked resemblance in general form, 

 but both have a very peculiar and special point of detail in structure 

 (the fringed anus) ; other points also of structure are so similar that 

 it is not easy at first to distinguish them even generically. 



(Ecobius teliger, sp. nov. (Plate XIII. fig. 8.) 



Similar in size, general form, and structure to (E. trimaculatus, 

 this species may be at once distinguished by its colour, and the mark- 

 ings on the abdomen. The cephalothorax is of a deep blackish-brown 

 hue, the legs and palpi are pale yellow, thinly annulated with black- 

 brown. The abdomen is of a dull cream-white colour above, the white 

 produced by cretaceous-looking spots intersected irregularly with 

 dusky lines ; on its centre is a longish black marking bearing a rough 

 resemblance to a double arrow-head, or of a diamond-shape, in front, 

 followed behind by, and connected with, a cruciform patch ; on the 

 outer sides of this marking are some black spots always near to, and 

 sometimes connected with and forming part of it ; the sides are black, 

 which colour encroaches in parts on the white of the upperside, and 

 forms behind, just above the spinners, a largish triangular white patch, 

 connected by a neck or shaft with the rest of the white ground of the 

 upperside ; the longest point of this triangular patch is directed 

 backwards ; thus it has the form of a spear or barbed arrow-head, 

 and well marked in all the examples of both sexes that I have seen : 

 the underside is of a dull whitey-brown colour. 



The palpi of the male are strong ; the digital joints large, but not 

 so large as in (E. trimaculatus ; the palpal organs are prominent and 

 highly developed, having some strong corneous projections, but dif- 

 fering in their structure from those of that species. The eyes are 

 grouped in the same general form as those of the species just men- 

 tioned, but they occupy a proportionally wider space, and form two 

 rather compact groups of four each ; the irregular flattened inter- 

 mediate pair of the hinder row are large and of an oblong form, and 

 each of them is placed obliquely rather inside and behind, though 

 contiguous to, the lateral of the same row on its side. 



The cephalothorax of the female is rounder than that of the male, 

 but in colour and markings it resembles that sex. 



Adults of both sexes were found on stones and rocks at Beirut, 

 Tiberias, Jerusalem, and Hebron. 



(Ecobius affinis, sp. nov. 



This spider is very nearly allied to (E. teliger, but differs in having 

 a paler cephalothorax, which is yellowish with a dusky brownish hue 

 in the region of the eyes and in a line with that backwards, as also 

 on the margins and in the directions of the normal indentations ; the 

 abdomen is also less distinctly marked, and, though the general cha- 

 racter of the markings is similar, the white ground-colour prepon- 



