1941] 
Spider Fauna of New England 
129 
NOTES ON THE SPIDER FAUNA OF NEW ENGLAND 
By Elizabeth B. Bryant 
Museum of Comparative Zoology, Cambridge, Mass. 
Nowhere, perhaps, in the New World, has the spider fauna 
of an equal area been more intensively studied than that of 
New England. 
One of the first students of American arachnology was 
Nicholas Marcellus Hentz, (1797-1856). While confining 
himself chiefly to the study of spiders of Alabama and North 
Carolina, he received much material from his friend and 
correspondant, the well known New England entomologist, 
Thaddeus William Harris, (1795-1856). As was the custom 
of his time, Hentz wrote very brief descriptions, reliance 
being placed upon his colored drawings for ultimate identi- 
fication. He described few new genera and distributed his 
species among the genera then known to Europe. From 
time to time, his papers were published in the Journal of the 
Boston Society of Natural History, covering the period from 
1842 to 1867. Subsequent to the death of Hentz, the secre- 
tary of the Society, Edward Burgess, assisted by James H. 
Emerton, assembled these scattered records, and together 
with some few additions by Emerton, they were published 
in 1875 as the second volume of the Occasional Papers of 
the Society. The collections of Hentz, including his types, 
were dried and mounted on pins, in the manner of entomo- 
logical specimens, with the result that today little remains 
but the labels in faded ink. The collection, together with 
his notes and such drawings as had not been distributed as 
souvenirs, became the property of the Boston Society, the 
present custodian. 
The first to devote his entire attention exclusively to the 
New England region as a unit, was James H. Emerton, 
(1847-1931) . When or why Emerton, who was a draftsman 
by training and of an artistic temperament by nature, be- 
