Cambridge. — On the Spiders of New Zealand. 193 



II.— DISTEIBUTION AND HABITS. 



Spiders are to be found more or less abundantly in eveiy part of tbe woi'ld, 

 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, JVemesia, etc. — strike even those who have the 

 greatest aversion to spiders with wonder; and the egg cocoon of a not 

 unfrequent spider in England, Uro variegata, could hardly fail to arrest the 

 attention of the least concerned in natural history. This cocoon is of a pear 

 shape, formed of sti'ong 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. 

 Erom 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, Eurypelma 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, 



