CAMBRIDGE.—On the Spiders of New Zealand. 193 
II.—DISTRIBUTION AND HABITS. 
Spiders are to be found more or less abundantly in every part of the world, 
and in almost every conceivable position ; even subterranean caves, such as 
those of Adelsberg and the Island of Lesina, are tenanted by species peculiarly 
adapted, by the absence of eyes, to their dark and gloomy abodes. Less 
repulsive in appearance than most others of the Arachnida, the Araneidea are 
often extremely interesting in their habits. Being almost exclusively feeders 
on the insect tribes, they are consequently endowed with proportionate 
craftiness and skill; this is shown remarkably in the construction of their 
snares and dwellings, and though many live a vagabond life, and capture 
their prey without the aid of any snare, by merely springing upon it unawares, 
or, in some instances, running it fairly down in open view, yet craft and skill 
are equally apparent whatever be their mode of life and subsistence, 
Spiders are oviparous, and the cocoons or nests in which many species 
enclose their eggs are very beautiful, as well as varied and characteristic in 
form. The geometric webs of the Epeirides are a marvel of beauty and 
delicacy. The well-known but, as yet, very insufficiently studied nests of the 
* trap-door" spiders—Cteniza, Nemesia, etc.—strike even those who have the 
greatest aversion to spiders with wonder; and the egg cocoon of a not 
unfrequent spider in England, Zro variegata, could hardly fail to arrest the 
attention of the least concerned in natural history. This cocoon is of a pear 
shape, formed of strong silk net-work, of a yellow-brown colour, and attached 
to stems of dead grass, or sticks and other substances, in shady places, by a 
long elastic stem or pedicle of the same material; it is semi-diaphanous, and 
the eggs may be seen within like little seeds, but unattached to each other. 
From their mode of life spiders attain (as we should naturally suppose) their 
largest size, and are found in greatest profusion, in the tropical regions ; while · 
in more temperate climates, where the members of the insect tribes are smaller, 
and their species fewer, we find spiders in general of comparatively smaller 
dimensions and less numerous in species. The largest known spider—one of 
the family Theraphosides, found in Brazil Zurypelma klugii, Koch—has an 
extent of legs equal to nine inches, with a body (cephalo-thorax and abdomen) 
of two and a-half or more inches in length ; while the smallest known spider 
—Walckendera diceros, Cambr., found in England—has a body of no more 
than one twenty-fifth of an inch in length. Tropical countries, however, 
although possessing the giants of the spider race, are far richer in minute 
species than has been generally supposed. I have received numerous species 
from Ceylon, measuring from one-twelfth to one-twentieth of an inch only in 
length. 
To say that spiders are less repulsive in appearance than other Arachnida 
is to do them but scanty justice, for numbers of species of various genera, 
