536 



KEY. O. P. CAMBRIDGE ON SOME 



The falces are very long, strong, and of peculiar form ; they are gene- 

 rally rather prominent at their base in front, and have also an angular 

 prominence there on the outer sides ; looked at from the front, they are 

 strongly curved from each other, being also much excavated on their 

 inner sides ; their extremities are broad, obliquely truncate, and flat- 

 tened at the inner corners ; they are also very prominent behind, to- 

 wards the base, in the form of a strong, blunt-angular prominence ; they 

 are similar in colour to the cephalothorax ; and the greater part of 

 their surface in front and on the sides is furnished pretty thickly with 

 small blackish tubercles, giving them a roughened granular appear- 

 ance j their extremities have some bristly hairs near the fangs, which 

 latter are neither very long nor strong. 



The maxillcB and labium are of normal form, rather darker in colour than 

 the falces ; while the sternum is of a still richer hue, being of a dark 

 coppery-brown colour ; these parts are furnished with strong hairs, 

 some of those on the sternum being greyish white. 



The abdomen is black, with four small red-brown impressed spots or 

 punctures, forming a quadrangular figure near the middle of the 

 upperside, the fore side of the quadrangle being shortest ; it is more 

 or less thinly clothed with short greyish-white hairs : the spinners 

 are brown, and in front of the inferior ones is the usual supernume- 

 rary mammillary organ, or united pair of spinners ; those of the supe- 

 rior pair are less strong than the inferior, but have a small second 

 joint. 



The colours, as well as other specific characters, will serve to distinguish 

 this spider easily from D. benigna (Bl.), D, uncinata (Westr.), and D. 

 pusilla (Id.) ; while the granular surface of the falces especially, and 

 other characters as well, will make it easily to be distinguished from 

 D. globiceps (Sim.). 



The female resembles the male in colours ; but the caput is less massive^ 

 and the falces are of a more ordinary form, though the surface is (but 

 not so strongly) granular : the metatarsi of the fourth pair of legs 

 have each a strong calamistrum on their outer sides. 



Several adult males and one female were found by myself on low 

 herbage at Corfu in May 1864 ; and a single adult male was sub- 

 sequently received from the late Mr. Richard Beck, by whom it 

 was taken somewhere on the continent of Europe ; but the locality 

 is uncertain. Two examples of the male had the abdomen of a 

 deep reddish-brown hue ; and on one there was a faint appearance 

 of darker markings j but I believe the usual colour may be taken to 

 be black, as above described. 



