ORDER PULMONARIvE. 
415 
Epeira, Walck., 
Which have the two eyes of each side approximated by pairs, 
and almost contiguous, and the four others, forming in the 
middle a quadrilateral figure. The jaws are dilated from 
their base, and form a rounded palette. 
The epeira curcubitina is the only one known whose web 
is horizontal ; that of the others is vertical, or sometimes 
inclined. 
Some place themselves in the centre of the body inverted, 
or head downwards ; the others make for themselves a dwel- 
ling close by, either arched on all sides, and sometimes in the 
form of a silken tube, sometimes composed of leaves brought 
together, and connected by threads, or open at the top, and 
imitating a cup or bird’s nest. The web of some foreign 
species is composed of threads so strong, that it arrests little 
birds, and even embarrasses a man, who may happen to be 
engaged in it. 
Their cocoon is most frequently globular, but that of some 
species has the figure of a truncated ovoid, or of a very short 
cone. 
The natives of New Holland (Voyage a la recherche de La 
Peyrouse, p. 239), and those of some islands of the South Sea, 
eat, for the want of other aliment, a species of epeira, very 
near the Aranea esuriens of Fabricius. 
M. Walckenaer mentions, in his tabular view of the ara- 
neides, sixty-four species of epe'irae, generally remarkable for 
the variety of their colours, forms, and habits. He has dis- 
tributed them into divers small and very natural families, and 
of which we have endeavoured, in the article Epeira, in the 
second edition of the New Dictionary of Natural History, to 
simplify the study. Some important considerations, such as 
those of the sexual organs, have been neglected, or not suffi- 
ciently pursued. It is thus, for example, that the female of 
