1882. | SPIDERS FROM MADAGASCAR. 765 
scattered bristles upon the legs and a narrow band at the extremities 
of the joints below black; I can trace no black spines upon the 
genual joints; the palpi are pale yellow, as also are the maxillz, 
labium, and sternum. ‘The abdomen above and at the sides is of a 
shining silver colour, the dorsal region being ornamented by a broad 
brown cross, the arms of which are expanded at the extremities; the 
sides are reticulated with dark brown, and thus divided up into 
sharply defined plates, somewhat as in 7. margaritifera ; the ventral 
surface is dirty yellow. 
Cephalothorax oval, strongly indented behind the caput, which 
ascends obliquely from the thoracic region: the eyes are arranged 
much as in 7. margaritifera ; but the anterior pair are smaller and 
closer together, so that the six remaining eyes, which are larger, 
form triangular groups of three contiguous eyes on each side: the 
legs are long, slender, sparsely setose, their relative length 4, 1, 2, 
3; the palpi are moderately long and cylindrical, the falces also 
cylindrical. The abdomen is less acute at the dorsal angle than in 
T. margaritifera, and viewed from behind is seen to be obtusely 
tuberculated at the sides just below the apex; the terminal angle, 
however, is decidedly more acute; the posterior margin is also much 
less oblique ; the bristles upon the abdomen are confined to the 
ventral surface. Length 5 millim. 
Central Madagascar and east coast. 
The articulations of tibiee of the second and third pair of legs are 
sometimes not banded with carmine. 
EPEIRID&. 
Mera, Koch. 
4. Mera sPpLENDIDA, sp. n. (Plate LVII. figs. 3, 3a, 6.) 
3 2. Cephalothorax, palpi, front of falces, and legs fulvous ; 
apex of falces, labium, and sternum piceous; maxillee castaneous. 
Abdomen above bright metallic silvery, with two large elongated 
blackish patches in front, behind which is a broad transverse crescent- 
shaped, blackish-edged golden band, united in the centre by a short 
pedicle to a broad longitudinal dorsal band of the same colour, 
streaked obliquely on each side with blackish and spotted with 
silver! ; sides and ventral surface brown, dark and olivaceous when 
dry, paler in spirit, with four longitudinal silver stripes, two sub- 
dorsal and two ventral, but all four lateral. 
Cephalothorax large, depressed, expanded behind the caput; 
sutural impression strongly defined, Y-shaped; eyes black, rather 
small, arranged across the front of the caput ; the central eyes slightly 
larger than the lateral, in the form of a quadrangle, the anterior eyes 
scarcely perceptibly nearer together than the posterior ones, from 
which they are separated by a distinctly greater interval than the 
posterior eyes from one another ; lateral eyes contiguous, one behind 
the other, much less obliquely than in M. Simon’s figure (Hist. Nat. 
1 In some examples these markings are pale and brassy, the extremities of 
the crescent are also often continued round so as to join the dorsal band. 
