295 



CORNICULARIA KOCH 1 1 CAMB.— A SPIDER NEW TO 

 GREAT BRITAIN. 



WITH A KEY TO THE BRITISH CORNICULARI/E. 



WM. FALCONER, 



Linthwaite, Huddersfield. 



(plate XVII.). 



In a paper entitled ' On some Rare Arachnids obtained in 1908/ 

 and issued in the ' Transactions of the Natural History Society 

 of Northumberland, Durham and Newcastle-upon-Tyne,' New 

 Series, Vol. III., part 2, 1909, Dr. A. Randell Jackson describes 

 and figures a new spider under the name of Cornicularia valid a, 

 founded on a solitary female, which he took from amongst 

 fallen leaves under a thorn bush on the banks of the Dee, 

 at Saltney Ferry in Cheshire. Through the kindness of its 

 discoverer, I have been able to compare this female with others 

 which lately came into my possession, and which were collected 

 in April of the present year by Mr. T. Stainforth of the Hull 

 Museum, on the North Lincolnshire coast, and sent to me for 

 identification. Included also in the collection were a couple of 

 males, which are undoubtedly of the same species. On exami- 

 nation, the latter were determined to be examples of the C. 

 kochii Camb., described and figured in the ' Proceedings of 

 the Zoological Society,' 1872. Mr. F. P. Smith, of London, 

 was of the same opinion, and the Rev. O. Pickard-Cambridge, 

 on a male being submitted to him, confirmed the identification, 

 though he doubts its identity with the spiders so named both by 

 Kulczynski in his ' Araneae Hungariae,' and by Simon in his 

 ' Les Arachnides de France ' and ' Histoire Naturelle de 

 Araignees.' C. valida Jackson is therefore the hitherto un- 

 recognised female of C. kochii Camb., (the name becomes a 

 synonym), while the male of the latter is here for the first time 

 recorded as an inhabitant of these islands. 



The Cornicularige are small spiders, ranging in size between 

 two and three mm., usually with black bodies and reddish or 

 yellowish legs, and may be met with amongst the moss, fallen 

 leaves and herbage of woods and marshes. They are members 

 of the group Erigoneae, and belong to that section of it, which 

 is characterised by an elongated oval cephalothorax, a sternum 

 longer than wide ; and in the female sex by a palpus which has 

 the tibia much longer than the patella, and more or less enlarged 

 from base to summit, and the tarsus strongly acuminate. 

 From the other genera comprised in the same section, they may 



igog Aug. i. 



