No. 2.1 PROTECTIVE RESEMBLANCES IN SPIDERS. 79 



a close inspection being necessary before she could be distin- 

 guished.* 



The same kind of resemblance is found in the genus 

 Argyrodes. These spiders are usually of parasitic habit, build- 

 ing in the corners of webs of larger species. Two of them are 

 common in this countrj'^, fictilium and trigonum. They are 

 small and slender, with elongated bodies. Of trigonum Mr. 

 Emerton says : "These spiders live among the upper threads 

 of the webs of Agelena, Linyphia and Theridium and are most 

 common in woods of pine and spruce. They look, in the web, 

 like straws, or still more like the scales from pine buds, which 

 are often caught in the same webs." f We find it in Wiscon- 

 sin, on the ground among the grass. Fictilium has not been 

 found in the web. We have caught it always in a swampy 

 piece of ground, where the long grass is partly green and 

 partly dead and yellow. In this locality its slender, yellowish, 

 elongated body affords it good protection. 



A foreign species, A. epeirse, is referred to by Cambi'idge 

 as follows : " It appeared to have spun its own little irregular 

 snares among the mazes of the Epeira's webs, in which it sat, 

 looking like a little morsel of dead stuff, and perhaps deluding 

 the other spiders into a belief that it was so, and thus escaping 

 being devoured." J 



In Ariamnes attenuata (fig. 2, see p. 80), the abdomen is 

 still more elongated than in Argyrodes. This species is also 

 yellowish in color and is probably protected by its resemblance 

 to a straw or blade of dead grass. Many related forms have 

 been described by Simon, Taczanowski and others. 



* While the C. conica of Menge seems to be identical with 0, caudata Hentz, 

 his description of the web as from seven to ten feet wide, and stretching from tree to 

 tree, does not at all correspond to the web of the American species, which does not 

 exceed twelve or fifteen inches in diameter. The measurements that he gives seem 

 strangely out of proportion to the size of the spider, which is only 8 mm. long. 



Menge says that Lister, who first observed the habits of this .species, thought 

 that the remains of insects which the spider had devoured were hung across the web 

 as trophies of victory. Preussische Spinnen, p. 76. 



\New England Spiders of the Family Therididae, Trans. Connecticut Academy, 

 Vol. VI, 1882. p. 24. 



t Spiders of Palestine and Syria, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1872, Parti, p. 279. 



