ORDER PULMONART^. 4 I 5 



Epeira, Walck., 



Which have the two eyes of each side approximated by pairs, 

 and almost contiguous, and the four others, forming in the* 

 middle a quadrilateral figure. The jaws are dilated from 

 their base, and form a rounded palette. 



The epeira curcuhitina is the only one known whose web 

 is horizontal ; that of the others is vertical, or sometimes 

 inclined. 



Some place themselves in the centre of the body inverted, 

 or head downwards; the others make for themselves a dwel- 

 ling close by, either arched on all sides, and sometimes in the 

 form of a silken tube, sometimes composed of leaves brought 

 together, and connected by threads, or open at the top, and 

 imitating a cup or bird's nest. The web of some foreign 

 species is composed of threads so strong, that it arrests little 

 birds, and even embarrasses a man, who may happen to be 

 engaged in it. 



Their cocoon is most frequently globular, but that of some 

 species has the figure of a truncated ovoi'd, or of a very short 

 cone. 



The natives of New Holland (Voyage a la recherche de La 

 Peyrouse, p. 239), and those of some islands of the South Sea, 

 eat, for the want of other aliment, a species of epeira, very 

 near the Aranea esuriens of Fabricius. 



M. Walckenaer mentions, in his tabular view of the ara- 

 ne'ides, sixty-four species of epeirae, generally remarkable for 

 the variety of their colours, forms, and habits. He has dis- 

 tributed them into divers small and very natural families, and 

 of which we have endeavoured, in the article Epeira, in the 

 second edition of the New Dictionary of Natural History, to 

 simplify the study. Some important considerations, such as 

 those of the sexual organs, have been neglected, or not suffi- 

 ciently pursued. It is thus, for example, that the female of 



