716 MB. r. o. piCKAiiD OAMBMDaB ON [June 16, 



7. On the Theraphosidce of the Lower Amazons : being an 

 Account of the new Genera and Species of this Group 

 of Spiders discovered during the Expedition of the 

 Steamship ' Faraday ' up the River Amazons. By 

 Fredk. O. Pickard Cambridge, B.A.' 



[Keceived June 16, 1896.] 



(Plates XXXIII.-XXXV.) 



The Spiders described in the present paper form a first small 

 instalment of the collection made by Mr. Austen and myself during 

 our expedition up the Lower Amazons in the s.s. ' Faraday,' under 

 the charge of Mr. Alexander Siemens. The idea of publishing 

 the zoological results of the expedition in hook-form by the 

 Museum of Natural History has, I believe, been definitely 

 abandoned. This being the case, I have availed myself of the 

 generosity of this Society, and shall endeavour to publish my 

 account of the Araneidea in small sections, as opportunity oifers. 



The identification of meoabers of this order is by no means the 

 easy matter one would suppose ; for not only does the material 

 itself offer great difficulties, hut almost every point of classifica- 

 tion has to be reinvestigated ab initio. 



• Of the total number of species represented in the collection 

 I am, of course, unable to speak with certainty at present, but I 

 should probably be within the mark if 1 were to estimate it at 

 about ^00. ilow many of these may be new it is impossible to 

 say, though they will scarcely perhaps bear the proportion of 

 eleven new species to fourteen described, as has been the ease in 

 the present paper in the family Theraphosidoi. 



The district of the Amazon Valley may be broadly divided into 

 three fairly well-marked regions. First, the alluvial region of the 

 river itself, including the countless islands and vast tracks of 

 luxuriant river-margin. 



Second, the higher and drier Campos districts, sandy regions 

 clothed with grass and spangled with flo«'ers soon after the com- 

 mencement of the rainy season, about the month of March or 

 April. 



Third, that vast region significantly termed by the natives "■Terra 

 Firma," clothed for hundreds and hundreds of square miles by the 

 impenetrable forest. 



And to these three regions I must add what I may term the 

 " Lago district," — the Lake district so-called — where acres of 

 rushes, sedge-grass, and water-weeds furnish a habitat frequented 

 by a fauna evidently peculiar. Here almost every form seems 

 to be adapted for a seuii-amphibioua existence. Large Spiders 



' Oomniuaicat.ed by tlio Scciotayy. 



