168 Transactions. — Zoology. 



movements, however, were not fast ; but it wore such a strange appearance 

 ■ — black, with its pure white palpi, and its uplifted threatening chela?, tbat 

 I, bearing in miud our small blackish katipo spider, was on my guard ; 

 perhaps too much so.* 



In that same year, however, I found, in the evening, among my thick 

 long mosses in my vasculum, one of these Arachnids, or rather the anterior 

 half of one without its abdomen, etc. ; it was still living and could crawl 

 slowly. Subsequently, in 1881, I secured another and a perfect specimen 

 from amoug the thick -growing and long Plagiochila subsimilis (and then not 

 on the surface, but within !) How the creature can possibly manage to crawl 

 through such fine and dense vegetation is a marvel to me. It generally 

 keeps its long falces upright, or inclining towards its back, and bent at a 

 sharp angle, and sometimes moves them forward alternately in progression, 

 much like a hand or a foot: and sometimes, like its congener Chelifer (supra), 

 holding them up with distended claws in a threatening attitude. 



My second lot belong to the family Araneidai (or True Spiders), and 

 contain three fine species ; two of them are, I believe, quite new, and 

 one has been already described in the Trans. N.Z. Inst., but is still little 

 known. 



You will, no doubt, remember that at our ordinary meeting held here in 

 August, 1881, I had the pleasure of bringing before you specimens of a fine 

 spider I had then recently received from one of our country members ; at 

 that time I promised to lay before you a paperf containing its description, 

 habits, etc., and this I now do. 



From that kind country member, Mr. J. Drummond, who resides at Te 

 Ongaonga, I learn (in answer to several letters) that in July, 1881 (our wet 

 season and mid-winter), while engaged in making a drain in some low-lying 

 swampy land, he noticed several large spiders, which were dug up from 

 about twenty inches to two feet under the surface, and though amongst 

 black swampy soft soil, they always came out of the mud quite dry and 

 clean, with their skins looking like velvet. 



* Having here alluded to the bite of the katipo spider, I should also say (lest I should 

 be misunderstood) that I do not support those monstrous stories respecting the effects of 

 its bite, which some have related ; (some of those accounts are, I think, to be found 

 recorded in the early volumes of the Trans. N.Z. Inst.). In past years I had several cases 

 of persons bitten by the katipo brought to my notice, including Europeans and Maoris : 

 some of them I had also to attend to medically, and so watched the cases ; and while the 

 effects of the bite are generally pretty severe at first, they are transient, being completely 

 over by the second day, leaving no after effects ; and never, I believe, caused death, or 

 anything like it. 



t See Proceedings, Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xiv., p. 566. 



