233 



KEYS TO THE FAMILIES AND GENERA OF BRITISH 

 SPIDERS, AND TO THE FAMILIES, GENERA AND 

 SPECIES OF BRITISH HARVESTMEN AND PSEUDO 

 SCORPIONS. 



WM. FALCONER, 

 Slaithwaite, near Huddersfield. 



Amongst the neglected branches of Natural History in this 

 country there is not one more worthy of the best attention of 

 naturalists, or more replete with interest, nor one which would 

 more fully repay research than that dealing with spiders and 

 allied forms. The would-be student, however, is beset with 

 difficulties from the first, not the least of which is the lack of 

 an accessible and comprehensive literatiu'e on the subject, for 

 since the publication of the last great English work, the Rev. 

 O. Pickard Cambridge's ' Spiders of Dorset ' (1879-82), the pro- 

 gress made in nomenclature and in our knowledge of the British 

 species has been recorded only in various publications, such as 

 the Annals and Magazines of Natural History, and the tran- 

 sactions of the Dorset Field Club, the Northumberland, Dur- 

 ham and Newcastle-apon-Tyne Natural History Society, and 

 the Chester Society. Even then in many cases recourse must 

 be had for figures and descriptions to foreign authors. — Kul- 

 czynski's ' Araneae Hungariae,' and Simon's ' Les Arachnides 

 de France' and' ' Histoire Naturelle de Araignees,' etc. So 

 wonderful are the instincts, habits and structure of these crea- 

 tures that there is no doubt that if this difficulty were removed, 

 many more than at present would devote some time to their 

 study. 



The following keys have therefore been compiled — those 

 for spiders mainly with the assistance of the above-named 

 works ; those for harvestmen and pseudoscorpions with that 

 of the Rev. O. Pickard Cambridge's monographs (' Proc. Dorset 

 Field Club,' 1890 and 1892), in the hope that they will prove 

 of service in the identification of the British Arachnida in so 

 far as they treat of them. In the case of the spiders, I have 

 followed chiefly the sequence and arrangement, but not always 

 the nomenclature of Mr. Cambridge's ' List of British and Irish 

 Spiders,' 1900. The abbreviation B.I.S. in the footnotes refers 

 to this work. 



It must be remembered that when the example under con- 

 sideration has been located by the successive use of the tables — 



1910 June I. Q 



