THERIDION. 
177 
The male is smaller than the female, which it resembles in colour, but its legs are longer, 
an anterior one measuring nine sixteenths of an inch. The falces are long, widely divergent 
at the extremity, provided with a large, pointed process near the base, on the under side, and 
are terminated by a long fang abruptly curved near its extremity. The radial joint of the 
palpi is larger than the cubital and clavate; the digital joint is oval, convex and hairy 
externally, concave within, comprising the palpal organs, which are moderately developed, 
complicated in structure, with a curved, black spine on the outer side, and a shorter one at 
the extremity, and are of a red-brown colour. The convex sides of the digital joints are 
directed towards each other. 
This common spider, remarkable for its variation in colour, spins among coarse herbage 
and the stems of shrubs numerous fine, glossy lines, intersecting one another in different planes 
and at various angles, which constitute a snare similar in design to the toils constructed by 
the Theridia generally. It pairs in June, and in July the female deposits about 170 spherical 
eggs, of a yellowish-white colour, not agglutinated together, in a globular cocoon of bluish- 
white, blue, or greenish-blue silk, of a loosish texture, measuring one fourth of an inch in 
diameter. The cocoon is enclosed in a slight tissue of white silk connected with the inferior 
surface of the leaves of trees and shrubs, the edges of which are convolved about it and are 
retained in that position by silken lines. The young remain a long time in this nidus with 
the female, and are supplied by her with food. 
M. Koch, in transferring that variety of Theridion lineatum named redimitum to the genus 
Steatoda of Professor Sundevall (‘Conspectus Arachnidum,’ pp. 16, 17), lapsed into an 
inconsistency which M. Walckenaer has pointed out in his ‘Hist. Nat. des Insect. Apt.,’ 
t. ii, p. 288, and which he himself has subsequently coi’rected. 
This species abounds in Scotland and Ireland. 
Theridion quadripunctatum. PI. XIII, fig. 112. 
Theridion quadripunctatum, Walck., Hist. Nat. des Insect. Apt., tom. ii, p. 290. 
-— — Hahn, Die Arachn., Band i, p. 78, tab. 20, fig. 58. 
— — Sund., Yet. Acad. Handl., 1831, p. 118. 
— — Blackw., Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist., second series, 
vol. viii, p. 337. 
Steatoda quadripunctata, Sund., Consp. Arachn., pp. 16, 17. 
Eucharia bipunctata, Koch, Uebers. des Arachn. Syst., erstes Heft, p. 7. 
•— — Koch, Die Arachn., Band xii, p. 99, tab. 418, fig. 1027. 
Phrurolithus ornatus, Koch, Die Arachn., Band vi, p. 114, tab. 208, fig. 515. 
Titulus 11, Lister, Hist. Animal. Angl. De Aran., p. 49, tab. 1, fig. 11. 
Length of the female, 1th of an inch; length of the cephalo-thorax, ith, breadth, ~th; 
breadth of the abdomen, | 5 ths; length of an anterior leg, Jrd; length of a leg of the third 
pair, 1th. 
