542 REV. O. P. CAMBRIDGE ON EGYPTIAN SPIDERS. [June 20, 



good health and a love of the subject would find ample reward for 

 any real work among the Insects and Spiders of the Lower Nile 

 basin. My own work there during about eleven weeks, between the 

 middle of January and the middle of April 1864, from Alexandria 

 to Assouan, resulted in a collection of several hundred species of 

 Insects of all orders, besides the 1 64 species of Spiders contained in 

 the present list, as well as some few Acaridea and Scorpionidea. 

 Rather more than one third of the Spiders belong to the two families 

 Drassides and Salticides, these being also the two families even more 

 numerously represented, absolutely as well as proportionally, in 

 Syria and Palestine than in Egypt (see P. Z. S. 1872, p. 214). In 

 those countries they comprise 1 1 7 species, or nearly one half of the 

 Araneidea met with, while the numbers found in Egypt are 56. 

 The dry and desert nature of both Palestine and Egypt are alike 

 favourable to the development of the Drassides and Salticides ; and 

 many of the species are common to both countries. Suffering a 

 good deal from climatic influences, I was unable to work very hard. 

 Except for this and some other reasons, I feel no doubt but that the 

 number of Spiders in my collection would have been nearly, if not 

 quite, doubled ; and if so, it is evident that there remains yet much 

 to be done in order to exhaust the Egyptian species of this order. 

 Of the total (164 species), 91 appeared to be new to science ; 62 of 

 these are now described for the first time, while the remainder 

 (principally, as before mentioned, of the Drassides and Salticides) 

 have been already described, P. Z. S. 1872 and 1874. One Spider 

 alone in the collection appears to require the formation of a new 

 genus for its reception, see p. 596. This Spider is of the family 

 Lycosides, and is allied to the genus Du/omedes ; it was found in a 

 swamp near the canal about three miles from Alexandria. 



Comparing the numbers of genera and families with those found 

 in Syria and Palestine, their very near similarity is remarkable. 19 

 families, comprising 59 genera, are the numbers in the latter district, 

 while those of Egypt are respectively 17 and 60. In the present 

 list, however, the Latreillian genus Salticus is divided into eight 

 generic (or subgeneric) groups ; if this had been also done in the 

 Palestine list, the number of genera would have been there 66 

 instead of 59 ; but even then the totals are remarkably near to each 

 other. Comparing these results with those I have obtained in Great 

 Britain (at present one of the best-, or perhaps the best-worked 

 European district in respect to the Araneidea), we find here 7S 

 genera distributed among 14 families, 4 South-European families 

 being unrepresented. This comparison might have been extended 

 to the results obtained in Sweden by M. Westring and Dr. T. 

 Thorell, as well as in Italy by Dr. P. Pavesi, and in Algeria by 

 Mons. II. Lucas ; but it seems best at present to confine it to those 

 results obtained by, as nearly as possible, an identical system of 

 generic and family limitation, since a difference of system would 

 necessarily produce a different result in regard to the numbers of 

 families and genera. I should have liked to have been able to 

 make a more certain collation of the Egyptian Spiders with those of 



