CaMBRIDGE.—On the Spiders of New Zealand. 191 
good and tangible specific characters, most useful (in fact indispensable) in the 
determination of species, in many cases where form, colour, and other points 
of structure present but little reliable difference.* In one instance (Lycosa 
andrenivora, Bl) I observed frequent acts of copulation (1) between an adult 
male and female, and in every act there was an embrace which brought the 
under part of the abdomen of each spider in contact with that of the other, 
forming a perfect apparent coition between the sexual apertures of the two ; 
in this instance the palpi were not used at all. 
An eminent Prussian arachnologist (Herr Menge) has based numerous 
genera on the form of the several portions of the male palpal organs; but the 
mere fact of these characters belonging to one sex only, appears conclusively 
fatal to their adoption as leading characters of genera. The spinners of spiders, 
situated as before observed (f. 20, 150, and 13r), are two, four, six, or eight 
in number, and usually placed in pairs; when a fourth pair is present it is 
* At the time of writing the above I had not had an opportunity of seeing 7 
papers by German ET A. Menge (Ueber die Lebensw. d. Arachn., p. 36) an 
A. Ausserer (Beob. ueber die Lebensw. der Spinnen, p. 194, etc.), in which, as d 
by Dr. Thorell (** On Eur ean Spiders," p. 27, note 1), iti is stated that “the male spider, 
before the act of серн, emits from the sexual aperture, situated under the base of 
the abdomen, a drop of sperma on a kind of small web made for the purpose, which drop 
he ri takes up in the genital bulb of the palpi.” 
the usual modus мл it certainly seems strange that so painstaking 
and rale an observer as Mr. Blackwall should never have seen it take place during 
at least forty years' eda “іп the field.” I certainly have not myself witnessed 
any such process, though in some few instances the whole act, apparently, of copulation, 
from its beginning to its conclusion, has come before me. Mr. Blackwall also, in a paper 
just come to hand (Proc. Lin. Soc., Vol VIL), and entitled * А succinct review of 
recent attempts to explain several remarkable sort in the physiology of Spiders and Insects,” 
alludes to Herr Menge’s solution of the point in question, and also to a conjecture of 
M. Dugés, offered many years previously ; and he mentions a fact observed by himself 
in reference to a male of Agelena, labyrinthica heres seems to support a part both of 
Dugés' conjecture and Menge's solution. Mr. Blackwall says that **a male of Agelena, 
labyrinthica, confined in a phial, spun a small web, id among = lines of which it was 
composed I perceived that a drop of шг milk-like fluid was suspended ; how it had 
been deposited there I cannot explain, £I observed that the spider by the alternate 
application of its palpal organs, ae Did the whole of it 
. Since the above note was penned I have received the оа part of Thorell's 
““ Synonyms of European Spiders," in which (Part IV., pp. 591-595) Dr. Thorell reviews 
most of the above among other considerations upon this interesting subject. It appears 
German araneologist, Herman, of whose writings I was ignorant, had in 1868 
vota ж there was some i mcer emi d a duet, or ducts, between the spermatic 
]s in the abdomen and the palpal org. This idea seems to be negatived by 
Vita retain (Dugés and Nem who iai failed to discover any duct in the 
where it should, if existant, be of comparatively easy discovery ; but their failure t 
discover more than two flexuose vermicuisr spermatic v) in the abdomen does not 
convince me that other—may-be excessively ucts may not be there, 
and so connect these tubes (through the stalk which contains the alimentary eanal, and 
joins the cephalo-thorax and abdomen) with the esophagus, as mentioned above. 
* 
