234 



The falees are rather long, and strongly tinged with brown. 

 The sternum yellow, variously marked with a black margin, or 

 with black spots and patches. The legs are similar in colour to the 

 cephalo-thorax, and distinctly annulated with dark yellow-brown. 

 The palpi are moderately long, slender, and like the legs in colour. 

 The radial joint is longer than the cubital, but has no projections 

 or apophyses. The digital joint is of moderate size ; its colour is 

 yellow-brown, with a rather long, dark red-brown, curved, 

 pointed, horn-like prominence at its base. The palpal organs are 

 prominent, and complex, and have, among some other conspicuous 

 processes, a filiform spine curved in a nearly circular form round 

 their inner side. 



The abdomen is short, and excessively convex above ; it pro- 

 jects considerably over the base of the cephalo-thorax, and has 

 two small, roundish, tubereuliform prominences in atransverse line 

 a little in front of the middle of the upper side ; the fore side of 

 these tubercles is black, the hinder side yellowish-white. The 

 rest of the abdomen is variegated with black, red, yellow-brown, 

 and white, and its surface is furnished thickly with curved bristles 

 of a spinous nature. 



This pretty little spider is not very rare at Bloxworth among 

 coarse grass and the debris of stems, sticks, and loaves in old 

 hedge-rows, plantations, and shrubborios, as well as among 

 heather and furze bushes. It occurs also in other parts of 

 Dorsetshire, as well as of England, generally ; and has been met 

 with in Scotland and "Wales. It constructs a beautiful little egg- 

 cocoon, of a pear, or miniature balloon shape attached by a 

 slender stalk to dead grass, stems, or bits of stick (sometimes to 

 gate posts, and in the corners of verandahs and porches) ; its 

 outer covering is a kind of coarse, irregular network of a dark, 

 reddish, yellow-brown colour, enclosing a fine silken bag, in which 

 the eggs, no more than six or eight in number, are loosely con- 

 tained, i.e., they are not gummed together as is the case with 

 the eggs of some other spiders. I have found Ero thoracica in the 

 adult state in early spring and throughout the summer. 



