8041 



Arachnida. 



travel would be accomplished. In the course of the ascent and 

 descent I noted and bottled more species of spiders than I had yet 

 seen in Scotland ; but yet all were of species more or less common 

 all over England ; only one, Lycosa'rapax, seemed to be rather 

 more numerous here than I had seen it elsewhere, and much more 

 strongly marked. This species 1 found (as also Lycosa andrenivora) 

 quite on the summit of the mountain, which is only, however, about 

 1800 feet high. I was disappointed here in finding the juniper- 

 bushes so very unproductive : in England I have found both juniper 

 and furze generally swarming with spiders. The only spider found 

 here that I had not captured before was Epeira celata, underneath 

 dark and damp overhanging banks and rocks at the foot of the moun- 

 tain. The next day was devoted to a search along the banks of the 

 lovely Loch Katrine ; but after a toilsome morning my only capture 

 worth recording was several specimens of Linyphia triangularis, a 

 very beautiful and distinctly marked spider that I had never seen 

 before ; it inhabits the angles and interstices of the rocky banks of 

 the Loch, hanging head downwards in a rather irregular thin sheet of 

 web. From the Trosachs, in the afternoon, we went on to the head 

 of the Loch, and I immediately betook myself to a couple of hours' 

 stone-turning on one of General Wade's abandoned military roads. 

 These roads look now like (what in many cases they have become) the 

 beds of winter torrents; the one I was in was then nearly dry, and 

 covered with large boulders and water-worn stones ; under these I 

 captured immature specimens, both male and female, of the curiously 

 shaped Walckenaera acuminata. The probable reason for the extra- 

 ordinary position of the eyes in the adult male of this species has 

 always been a great puzzle to me : instead of being placed, as in 

 most spiders, on the more or less convex surface of the cephalothorax, 

 they are hoisted up on a kind of stem or stalk, which issues perpen- 

 dicularly from the front of the cephalothorax to a height equal to nearly 

 half the entire length of the spider. On the summit of this stalk are 

 placed two of the eyes, looking upwards ; two more are seated just 

 below, looking forwards ; and the rest, two on each side of a slight 

 enlargement of the stalk, a little below again, and looking out side- 

 ways. The relative situation of the eyes in the immature male is the 

 same, but it seems that they are not forced up, as it were, to this great 

 height until the spider is just attaining maturity, for in some that 

 I captured, apparently with only one more moult to undergo before 

 becoming adult, the eyes were on a sort of bluntish cone, which, 

 though considerably elevated, yet bore no resemblance at all to the 



