44 REV. O. P. CAMBRIDGE ON NEW ARANEIDEA. [Feb. 5, 
clothed with grey hairs. The spinners are short, and in front of 
the ordinary ones is a transverse spinning-organ, always found 
correlated with the calamistrum on the fourth pair of legs. 
The male, besides being very much smaller than the female, has 
the cephalothorax of a very deep black-brown hue, with a marginal 
stripe on each side and in front of white hairs, and a narrow longi- 
tudinal stripe of the same kind bisecting the ocular area, and a few 
other white hairs near the posterior eyes and on the occiput. The 
legs are longer than in the female, especially those of the first pair ; 
they are of a bright orange-red colour, the femora and tibize of the 
first pair suffused with blackish, the tibiz rather enlarged and 
thickly clothed with long black hairs; besides other hairs all the 
legs are furnished more or less with some white ones on their upper 
side. The abdomen is of a deep black-brown hue, with a pale yellow- 
brown longitudinal central tapering stripe, clothed with white hairs, 
and reaching a transverse bar of the same kind just above the 
spinners; and on the underside are two oblique, elongate pale spots 
or patches similarly clothed, and placed transversely near the 
spiracular plates. The palpi are short and of a black-brown hue; 
the radial joint is shorter than the cubital; this latter joint has a 
fore margin of conspicuous white hairs; digital joint rather large, 
and its fore extremity drawn out. The palpal organs are simple, 
consisting of a roundish basal bulb, with a somewhat twisted paler 
process at its anterior side reaching not quite to the end of the 
digital joint. The sternum is black, clothed with coarse pale grey 
hairs. 
A nest of this spider containing numerous live individuals of both 
sexes, some adult, some immature, was sent a short time ago by 
Col. Bowker, from Durban, to Lord Walsingham, who, kindly acting 
on my suggestion, sent the whole to this Society’s Gardens, where, 
as I understand from Mr. Arthur Thomson, in whose care they 
are placed, the whole family are in a very active and thriving 
state. The nest is of considerable size, and filled a box of 2 feet 
long by 9 inches wide and 5 deep. Above this nest I hear that the 
spiders have now spun lines up to the top of the case in which they 
have been placed, as though for the ensnaring of flies, &c. ; but as 
their work is entirely nocturnal, no observations have yet been 
practicable in respect to this most interesting part of a spider’s 
economy. They appear to devour cockroaches and crickets, tearing 
them to pieces in concert, and each carrying off his share of the 
prey, like a pack of hounds breaking up a fox. 
This spider is allied to Stegodyphus acanthophilus, Dufour, of 
Southern Europe, Palestine, and Syria, but is smaller, differs greatly 
in colour and markings, and is, so far as I am aware, unique in its 
gregarious habits. Some of the examples had died during the long 
transit from Durban to England, and from these the descriptions 
have been made. 
