Cambeidge. — On a neiv Species of Trapdoor Spider. 281 



Art. XXXVII. — On a new Species of Trapdoor Spider from New Zealand. 

 By the Eev. 0. P. Cambridge, A.M., C.M.Z.S., Hon. Member N.Z. Inst. 



Plate X. 

 [Read before the Otago Institute, 9t}i October, 1877.] 

 In the year 1874 I received from Capt. Hiitton an adult female example of* 

 Nemesia (found at Oamaru), but upon which, owing to its damaged condition, 

 no reliable opinion could be formed. In the following year Capt. Hutton 

 again forwarded me several females of the same species, from the same 

 locality, with some particulars respecting their habits and nests observed 

 by Mr. E. Grillies, and the welcome information that that gentleman 

 purposed to record his numerous observations in a paper to be read before 

 the Otago Institute. These specimens were also much damaged before they 

 reached me, but, so far as they afforded means of determination, I was at 

 first inclined to think that they comprised two very nearly allied, but 

 probably distinct, species. In another bottle of various spiders, received at 

 the same time and from the same locality, there was an adult male example 

 (in excellent condition) of a Nemesia, which I have but little doubt is the 

 male sex of the species to which the females that accompanied it belong. 

 More recently still, Capt. Hutton has kindly sent me eight or nine adult 

 females and numerous immature ones (mostly in good condition), upon the 

 several nests of which Mr. Gillies' long and interesting paper has been 

 published.! I have come to the conclusion, after long and repeated exam- 

 inations and comx^arisons with each other, that, in spite of a considerable 

 difference in size, all these examples (received at the various times mentioned 

 above) belong to one and the same species, upon which I beg to confer the 

 name of its discoverer, and to call it Nemesia gilliesvi. 



From Mr. Gillies' paper (I.e., p. 225) I understand that the nest — 

 No. 1, pl. viii. (I.e.) — is supposed to have belonged to one of the female 

 examples first sent to me by Capt. Hutton. This nest is of a decidedly 

 different type from all the rest, having a branch issuing from near the 

 middle, and furnished not only with a door to the main tube, but with an 

 inner door or valve at the entrance to the branch. All the other nests are, 

 although slightly varied in some characters, of one type, consisting of a 



* The spiders referred to in this paper are very nearly allied to, and perhaps identical 

 with, the genus Pholeuon (L. Koch. Die Arachniden Australiens, p. 471, pl. xxxvi., fig. 

 3, changed to Arbanitis, 1. c, p. 491). The distinction, however, from Nemesia consists 

 chiefly, if not wholly, in the denticulation of the tarsal claws, and seems scarcely 

 important enough to requhe the formation of a distinct genus ; especially as in the 

 present species (which is q^uite a different one from that described by Dr. Koch) the 

 denticulation of the tarsal claws of the female differs from that of the male, 

 t " Tians. N.Z. Inst," A^II., pp. 222-262, pl. vi,-viii. 



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