310 



THE SPIDERS OF WICKEN, CAMBRIDGE. 



WM. FALCONER. 



Slaith'ivaite, Huddersjieli!. 



(Plate XV.). 



Only a few scattered fragments of that great marshland 

 which once covered so large an area of the counties of Lincoln, 

 Huntingdon, Cambridge, and Norfolk, can now be found in 

 an aboriginal condition. The best known of these remnants 

 of virgin fen is at Wicken. Portions of it have been acquired 

 from time to time and formed into reservations in which it 

 is hoped that the interesting fauna and flora characteristic 

 of the fenland will find a permanent sanctuary and be saved 

 from that extinction which threatened so many species a few 

 years ago when it was proposed to drain the fen and bring it 

 under cultivation. The moist conditions which are natural 

 to the fen are favourable to the production of a superabundance 

 of the lower forms of life, which constitute a never failing 

 source of a plentiful food supply for a great number of small 

 predaceous animals which act as effective agents in keeping 

 their prolificness within due bounds. That these hosts of 

 minute creatures in all stages of development are able to sur- 

 vive the periodical inundations to the depth of from two to 

 four feet (the tops of the tall reeds and short willows alone 

 showing above the water) which occur during the winter months, 

 indicate marvellous powers of adaptation in structure and habits 

 to apparently very adverse conditions. 



Although so long and regularly resorted to by naturalists, 

 the fen has not yet been systematically worked for its Arachnida. 

 Mr. W. Farren collected spiders there in the early part of 1869, 

 Mr. F. O. P. Cambridge in 1889, and Mr, C. Warburton in 

 1892, and workers in other branches of natural history have 

 occasionally bottled conspicuous and obtrusive examples and 

 forwarded them for identification to the Rev. O. Pickard 

 Cambridge, who has noted sixteen of them in the ' Trans. Linn. 

 Soc' Vols, xxvii and xxviii, and in various annual parts of the 

 ' Proceedings of the Dorset Field Club.' From the quality 

 of these records it seemed certain that the fen in time would 

 become as famous for rare spiders as it is already for rare 

 plants, birds and insects. This view was fully borne out by 

 the results of investigations made by myself from May 25th 

 to 28th, and by Dr. A. Randell Jackson from June 5th to 

 1 2th of the present year. Together we met with 100 differ- 

 ent species amongst which were several rare British spiders 

 not previously reported from the locality, notably Crustulina 

 sticta Camb., Taramicnits setostis Camb., Lophomma subce- 

 quale Westr., Entclecara trijrons Camb., Tetragnatha nigrita 

 Lendl., Trochosa spinipalpis F. O. B. Cb., and Sitticus caricis 



N aturalist, 



