174 



Micaria nitens L. Koch (Die Arachn.-fam. d. Drass., p. 90) of 

 which that author had only seen young, not fully developed females, 

 is stated to differ from M. puliearia also by all the thighs being fur- 

 nished with only one spine (above), and the tibial and metatarsi of the 

 1 st pair with tivo rows of very short spines on the underside, whereas 

 in M. puliearia the tibiae of the 1 st pair are without spines, and 

 the thighs of the 1 st pair have two, and those of the 3 rd pair as 

 many as four spines. M. nitens L. Koch would therefore seem to be 

 a separate species; but whether C. Koch's M. nitens be identical 

 with it, or only a variety of M. puliearia, is uncertain. At any rate 

 it seems to me, that the specific name nitens ought to be discarded, 

 as having been already in 1833 — i. e. long before it was employed 

 by C. Koch — given by Blackwall to M. puliearia (Stjnd.). There 

 is however no occasion to rechristen L. Koch's M. nitens before full- 

 grown and fully recognizable examples of it are met with. It is 

 often very difficult to distinguish fully developed forms of the Drass- 

 oid family; young specimens it is, in the present state of the sci- 

 ence, not seldom utterly impossible to identify with certainty. To 

 name suchlike half-developed animals can only lead to still farther 

 confusion in the already sufficiently entangled synonymisms. 



As regards Mic. nitens Westr., of which I now have the type- 

 specimen, an, as it appears to me, undeveloped female, before me, 

 I cannot any more than Westring distinguish it from M, pidicaria by 

 any thing else than its smaller size and "indumento abdominis ru- 

 diore et magis unicolore". Any spines under the tibiae of the 1 st pair 

 I am not able to discover — and the species seems therefore to be 

 distinguished from M. nitens L. Koch — but neither can I see 

 distinctly (the specimen is dried and somewhat injured) more than 

 one spine on the thighs. It may however be questionable, whether the 

 spine-armature is always precisely alike in quite young and in full- 

 grown specimens. As yet I am inclined to look upon M. nitens Westr., 

 as well as M. nitens C. Koch and M. nitens Ohl., as varieties only 

 of M. puliearia. 



M. guttulata C. Koch is probably also only a variety of M. pidi- 

 caria. 1 have a cf jun. of this last species, in which, as in M. guttulata, 

 only the two foremost, not all the four anterior thighs are black. 



(Pag. 336.) 3. M. nitens [= Micaria puliearia (Sond.) 1832, Var.?]. 

 See preceding species , M. puliearia Westr. 



