Colenso. — On some newly -discovered New Zealand Arachnids. 167 



the longest, measuring nearly 3 inches. Colour (after keeping in spirits) 

 brown, variegated with many small white spots and rings which under a 

 lens present a subtesselated appearance, those white rings are swollen and 

 appear as if jointed, each bearing two (or more) minute black spines ; coxa 

 large, prominent, slightly hairy, hairs patent ; trochanter very short, smooth ; 

 femur 7 lines long, beset with short spinous hairs; tibia (genual joint) 1 

 line long, smooth ; metatarsus of the second pair 6 lines long, (in the other 

 three pairs this joint is only 3 lines long,) with a few short and scattered 

 hairs, and four equidistant white rings ; tarsus 1 inch and 8 lines long, 

 hairy particularly towards tip, very finely annulated in the upper part and 

 very flexible : this last joint of all the legs is exceedingly fine and flexible 

 and curved at tip ; when the animal is taken out of spirits for examination 

 it is very difficult to keep this long last joint steady. 



Sternum very small ; anus produced. 



Hab. In dark forests, among long mosses and Hepaticse on the trunks 

 of living trees 6-8 feet from the ground, "70-mile Bush," between Norse- 

 wood and Danneverke, 1879-1881. 



This curious and strange animal has greatly puzzled me, not knowing 

 of any genus, or even family, to which it might rightly be referred. In its 

 peculiar and prominent characters it seems to partake of more than one 

 family of Arachnida, as they are at present constituted. In its body and 

 long filiform legs it agrees with Phalangium, in its long chelate falces with 

 Pseudoscorpionida [Cheliferidce) ; it evidently has also some relationship to 

 Thelyphonida through Phrynus, particularly in its extra long and filiform 

 (antenna-like) second pair of legs ; while its large and bent maxillary palpi 

 bear close analogy, if not affinity, with those organs in our endemic genera 

 (of Orthoptera) Deinacrida and Hemicleina. There may, however, be some 

 known genus to which it can be hereafter rightly referred ; at present I 

 have done my best here (without modern scientific works on Arachnida), 

 and by naming it as I have done I have placed it near to its proper place in 

 the Natural System. 



Believing this Arachnid to be very scarce, and having but one perfect 

 specimen, I have not cared to break it up so as to examine it more narrowly, 

 especially as to its buccal apparatus. I have only seen four specimens in 

 the woods, throughout three years, although from my first seeing one in 

 1879 (which I failed to capture), I have sought most diligently for speci- 

 mens. In the following year I accidentally, and most unexpectedly, saw 

 another in the same forest, and though I tried long and arduously to secure 

 it without smashing, I failed to do so ; it spread out its long flexible legs so 

 prodigiously, that in the end it escaped among the thick vegetation. Its 



