ERGATIS. 
147 
is heart-shaped. These parts are of a very dark-brown colour, the sternum being thinly 
covered with whitish hairs. The legs and palpi are robust, and of a brown hue; the two 
superior tarsal claws are curved and pectinated, and the inferior one is inflected near its base. 
The abdomen is oviform, clothed with short hairs, convex above, projecting over the base of 
the cephalo-thorax; along the middle of the upper part a broad, dentated, dark-brown band 
extends, which is generally bisected by an irregular, transverse, white line, between which 
and the spinners there is a series of obscure, angular lines, of a pale-brown or whitish colour, 
whose vertices are directed forwards; a deep border, of a dull-white hue, which becomes 
narrower as it approaches the spinners, encompasses the dark-brown band ; the sides are of 
a dark-brown colour, mottled with white ; the under part has a dull-white hue, a broad, dark- 
brown band, marked with a few T white spots, occupying the medial line; and the colour of 
the branchial opercula is brown. 
The male is smaller and darker coloured than the female, and its falces, which are 
longer, have a large prominence on the under side, and a minute one in front, near their 
articulation; they are hollowed about the middle of the inner surface, leaving a strong 
prominence near the extremity, on the lower part of which a few small teeth are situated, 
and they are curved a little forwards at the end. The cubital and radial joints of the palpi 
are short; the former is the stronger, and the latter has a small, pointed process projecting 
at right angles from the upper part, in front, and an obtuse apophysis at its extremity, on 
the outer side; the digital joint is oval, convex and hairy externally, concave within, com¬ 
prising the palpal organs; they are highly developed, have a strong, corneous process 
curving from below upwards, and terminating in a spiral point, which extends nearly to the 
articulation of the radial with the cubital joint, and are of a reddish-brown colour. 
The various places which arachnologists have assigned to the spiders constituting the 
genus Ergatis, in their attempts to arrange the Aruneidea in accordance with the natural 
relations of affinity and analogy, afford a sufficient indication that the task of determining 
their true position, before the discovery of those marked characters which serve to connect 
them with the Cmijtonidce , was attended by no ordinary difficulties. M. Walckenaer, in his 
‘Hist. Nat. des Insect. Apt.,’ t. iv, p. 500), has formed, with the species belonging to the 
genus Ergatis, previously included by him in the genera Drassus and Theridion, a small group 
which he has placed at the head of his genus Argus; but so closely are they allied to the 
Ciniflones by their structure and functions, being provided with eight spinners and calamistra, 
employed in the construction of their snares, that they cannot be removed from the family 
Cinijlonidce, which is founded upon those characters, without doing violence to the recognised 
principles of classification. 
Ergatis he7iigna fabricates an irregular web of whitish silk at the extremity of the twigs 
of heath and gorse growing in various parts of England, Wales, and Scotland. It pairs in 
May, and in that and the succeeding month the female constructs two or three contiguous, 
lenticular, white cocoons, of a compact texture, measuring about one seventh of an inch in 
diameter, on an average, which she attaches to the stems surrounded by her web, enveloping 
them with the refuse of her prey. Each cocoon contains from ten to thirty spherical eggs, 
of a pale-yellow colour, which do not adhere together. 
