DRASSUS. 
117 
immediately above the frontal margin, a regular quadrangle; the lateral eyes of the posterior 
row are the smallest, and the intermediate ones of the anterior row the largest and darkest of 
the eight. The abdomen is of an elongated-oviform figure, broader in the middle than at the 
extremities, rather convex above, and projects a little over the base of the cephalo-thorax; it 
is hairy, and of a grayish-brown colour, an obscure hand of a deeper shade extending from its 
anterior extremity, where there are some long black hairs, along the medial line halfway 
towards the spinners, and terminating in a point; the branchial opercula have a yellow hue, 
and that of the spinners is yellowish-brown. 
The female is larger than the male, measuring seven twelfths of an inch in length, but 
its legs are shorter, and its falces much less prominent than his. In colour the sexes closely 
resemble each other. 
M. Walckenaer states that the female deposits about seventy eggs, not adherent among 
themselves, in a subglobose cocoon of fine, compact, white silk, measuring five lines and a half 
in diameter; this cocoon is inclosed in a silken sac, which frequently comprises the female 
also; it is usually attached to the under side of a stone, and has withered leaves distributed 
over its exterior surface. 
An adult male of this species, which was first recorded as British by Dr. Leach (see the 
Supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth editions of the ‘ Encyclopaedia Britannica,’ article 
“ Annulosa”), has been received from the Rev. Hamlet Clark. An examination of this 
specimen, which was found near Northampton, in the autumn of 1853, and had recently 
changed its integument, has induced the conviction that M. Koch has assigned to this spider 
its appropriate situation in a systematic arrangement of the Araneidea by transferring it from 
the genus Clubiona to that of Drassus, as by the figure and disposition of its eyes and the 
structure of its oral apparatus it evidently appertains to the latter genus. 
Drassus ferrugineus. PI. VI, fig. 71. 
Drassus ferrugineus, Templeton, MS. History of Irish Arachnida. 
Length of the female, jjths of an inch. 
The legs are robust, hairy, and of a ferruginous colour; the first and fourth pairs are the 
longest and equal in length, and the third pair is the shortest. The cephalo-thorax is oval, 
narrow and deep anteriorly, rounded posteriorly, and of a dark ferruginous hue both above 
and underneath. The abdomen is ovate, elongate, or somewhat cylindrical, and cream- 
coloured ; a narrow spear-shaped macula occupying the medial line at the base of the upper 
part, and having three impressed dots on each side of it. 
This spider was discovered by Miss MacGee in a crevice of a wall in Belfast. By the 
structure of its oral apparatus it appertains to the genus Drassus, but by the form and 
disposition of its eyes it makes a near approximation to the genus Clubiona. 
