4 
Psyche 
[March 
History. He was the Secretary and principal support of 
this society until his death. 
He was a founder of our Society, for many years an 
officer, and one of our most regular attendants, often speak- 
ing and exhibiting specimens. Some years ago under the 
auspices of the Club he arranged for two series of public 
lectures on entomology, giving one lecture himself. He 
always seemed to be in good health, and collected spiders 
only a few months before his death, December 5, 1931. 
Aside from being a naturalist he was an artist for the 
sake of art. He painted hundreds of water colors, often 
depicting the sea, the shore, or ships. For several seasons 
this was done at Ipswich, and in later years he went regu- 
larly in July to Gloucester for painting. He frequently 
exhibited before art societies, and lived for many years 
in an artist’s studio apartment. 
His principal interest and work was on the taxonomy and 
distribution of the spiders of New England and Canada. 
His method of sifting leaves, moss and detritus brought to 
light great numbers of the smaller forms. At first he sent 
these to the Rev. 0. P. Cambridge in England, who de- 
scribed them; later he began his famous series of New 
England Spiders, publishing the Theridiidse in 1882. The 
plates in these papers were especially valuable; those in 
the second part (Epeiridas) containing some of his finest 
drawings. It is these illustrations that give the character- 
istic appearance of the parts which have given to Mr. 
Emerton much of his importance as an arachnologist. 
Cambridge, in reviewing Hentz’s Spiders of the United 
States (Nature, 1876) refers to Emerton’s two plates as 
follows : — “In point of accurate detail and artistic finish 
these figures are immeasurably in advance of those en- 
graved from Hentz’s drawings.” 
The series on New England spiders was followed by 
four supplements, two papers on Canadian spiders and 
numerous smaller articles, describing in all over 350 
species, always with useful illustrations. No other writer 
has so thoroughly figured his species, old as well as new. 
In several papers he traced the distribution of certain 
