New York State Museum Bulletin 
Entered as second-class matter Ncvember 27, 1915, at the Post Office at Albany, New 
York, under the act of August 24, 1912. Acceptance for mailing at special 
rate of postage provided for in section 1103, act of October 3, 
1917, authorized July 19, 1918 
Published bi-monthly by The University of the State of New York 
No. 252 AND IBYANINI I) INT, NZ, May 1924 
The University of the State of New York 
New York State Museum 
Joun M. Crarke, Director 
A REVISION OF THE PISAURIDAE OF THE 
UNITED STATES 
(WiITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE NEW YORK SPECIES) 
BY 
Soe IRSIMDAUNY (Cy eillisylial(OUe 
INTRODUCTION 
This important group, scientifically known as the family 
Pisauridae, includes some of the largest of our true spiders. The 
various species are widely distributed; they are common in many 
localities and often conspicuous but, from the point of view of 
the systematist, they have long been in a state of great confusion. 
This condition may be accounted for in part by the lack of type 
material, but to a larger extent it is due to the extreme variability 
to which many species are subject. Disparity of sizes in the sexes 
Of certain species has also been a disturbing element. It has 
not been possible to recognize some of the species described in 
early accounts where color and size were the only characters con- 
sidered; but they have been listed in this revision in the hope that 
more intensive collecting will reveal representatives of at least a 
few of them. The types of the earlier described species, those 
on Walckenaer, We Geer, Koch, and) Hentz, ‘have ‘long since 
disappeared; at least they are not now known in collections. Of 
those described more recently, | have seen Maypacius flori- 
CMM oTMOMme ands altigany Dive tprels  Lmerton) Wil he 
drawings by John Thomas Abbott, preserved in the British Museum, 
have never been published but copies of the pisaurids have been 
furnished me for use in this study. 
The family Pisauridae is a cosmopolitan one composed of thirty 
odd genera distributed most freely in the tropical and semitropical 
regions but strongly represented in the temperate zones by several 
well-defined genera. Of the five genera and seventeen species here 
recognized from America north of Mexico, one genus is new and 
one reported for the first time. Four of the seventeen species 
recorded are new. 
[5] 
