ARANEIDEA. 
105 
marginal line, and the whole is clothed pretty thickly with mixed yellowish, coppery-golden, 
and grey squamose appressed hairs, those immediately round the eyes of the front row being 
very bright and forming, probably in most cases, scarlet ‘ irides.’ 
The eyes form an area broader than long, and the posterior row is larger than the 
anterior one ; the central pair of the anterior row are very large and close together, hut not 
contiguous, being separated by an interval a very little less than that which divides each 
from the lateral of the same row on its side. These laterals are rather larger than the eyes 
of the posterior row, and the small eye (on each side) of the middle row is in a straight 
line with the inner edges of the fore lateral and hind lateral eyes, being also nearer to the 
hind lateral than to the fore lateral eye. The height of the clypeus is equal to the diameter 
of one of the fore central eyes. 
The legs are strong and moderately long. Their relative length is 4, 1, 2, 3 ; they are of 
a pale-yellowish colour, furnished thickly with hairs, bristles, and spines. Some of the hairs 
are squamose and appressed, others long and prominent, especially on the first pair ; those 
beneath the tarsi and metatarsi are the most numerous, and black, the rest being mostly grey 
or sandy-coloured. The terminal tarsal claws have a claw-tuft beneath them, and are long 
and slender, especially those of the fourth pair ; these have only 1—3 minute teeth about the 
middle of the under side ; on some, if not all, of the other legs, even these denticulations 
appear to be wanting. The legs of the first pair are considerably the strongest, while those 
of the fourth pair are much the longest. 
The palpi are short and strong, similar in colour to the legs, and furnished with long (as 
well as some shorter squamose) grey hairs ; the radial joint is shorter and less strong than the 
cubital, and its fore extremity on the outer side is produced into a not very long, tapering, 
sharp-pointed, curved projection whose extremity is of a deep reddish-brown colour ; the 
digital joint is of great length, the base is of a somewhat angular shape, and the fore part is 
produced into a long cylindrical curved form ; the palpal organs are bulbous, tumid, placed 
chiefly beneath the hinder part of the digital joint, and encircled at their base and round the 
inner side by a long, strongish, tapering spine, which runs more or less closely alongside the 
inner margin of the digital joint, and forms a very conspicuous and characteristic feature of 
the species. 
The f aloes are short and straight, placed considerably backwards, and of a dark yellow- 
brown colour. 
The sternum is small, oval, yellow-brown, and clothed with coarse grey hairs. 
The maxillae are short and almost touch, at their extremities, over the labium ; these 
parts are yellow-brown, paler at the extremities of the former and the apex of the latter. 
The abdomen is oval, of a yellowish-brown colour with an indistinct dark brown stripe 
along the middle of the fore part of the upper side, and clothed pretty densely with short 
squamose, mixed yellowish, grey, sandy, and shining coppery hairs ; the under side is of a 
pale dull brownish-yellow hue, clothed with grey, squamose hairs. 
The female is larger than the male, but resembles that sex in colours and other general 
characters. It is probable that a series of examples would show, in some instances, a more 
or less distinct pattern on the upper side of the abdomen, depending on the distribution of 
the colours of the hairs, which are subject to much variation in different individuals of the 
same species in this group. Traces of this pattern in brown blotches and markings are 
visible in the female/ The palpi, however, are so characteristic in the adult male that the 
species can hardly be mistaken for any other. 
