7962 



Arachnida. 



Labium yellow-brown, with the base dark brown. Its shape is tri- 

 angular, rounded off at top. 



Sternum heart-shaped, thinly clothed with coarse white hairs, and 

 of a dark brown colour. 



Abdomen oviform, yellowish brown, with a strong reddish tinge, 

 clothed with short brown and hoary hairs. On the upper side a 

 dark brown oblong band, sometimes slightly pointed at the end, 

 occupies the upper end to rather more than a third of its length ; 

 between this band and the spinners are several dark transverse 

 curved bars (in most specimen^ composed of two fine parallel 

 lines), with an oblique spot or short line at the ends: these bars 

 are more or less strongly marked in different specimens, in some 

 being almost obsolete, in others parts only are visible. The 

 sides of the abdomen are mottled more or less with dark brown. 

 The under side is yellow-brown, with a broad brown band along 

 the middle. Spinners eight in number. 



The female is rather paler coloured than the male, but resembles it 

 in markings. Its falces are wanting in the peculiarities described 

 as characteristic of the male. 



I discovered this spider in tolerable abundance on trees and bushes 

 in a hedge on Hursley Down, near Winchester, in May, 1860, and 

 since then at Bloxworth, Dorset, and Lyndhurst, Hampshire, in similar 

 situations. Except from its smaller size it might easily be mistaken, 

 on a casual glance, for its ally Ergatis benigna, but it may readily be 

 distinguished, not only by size, but by the band on the upper side of 

 the abdomen not being dentated on the edges, as in Ergatis benigna, 

 by the bars that succeed the band being curved and not angular, and 

 by the very peculiar spur at the base of the radial joint of the palpi. 

 This spur, though found in E. benigna, is in that species quite rudi- 

 mentary and very dark-coloured. Moreover, as far as my observations 

 have gone, the habitat of E. benigna is on low plants and very dwarf 

 bushes, while all I have yet found of E. arborea have been beaten 

 from trees and high bushes. 



Family Theridiim. 

 Theridion projectum. 

 Colour red-brown. Abdomen with a projecting ridge round the 

 margin. Two central eyes of front row very minute. On each 

 side of these is a group of three others almost contiguous, in the 

 form of an equilateral triangle. The eyes of these two groups 



