OCR Text |
Show 1874.] REV. O. P. CAMBRIDGE ON N E W DRASSIDES. 409 lothorax tinged with orange-brown (the ocular region being brown) and clothed with short fine pale hairs; a rather indistinct, narrow, elongate, wedge-shaped, brown stripe runs backwards from between the hind central eyes, and the normal grooves and indentations are marked by dusky converging stripes. In form the cephalothorax is short, round behind, constricted laterally at the caput, truncate before, but not so broad at this part as in some other species; the hinder slope is gradual; and the whole profile describes a pretty uniform curve, of which the occiput is the middle and the highest part. The eyes are of moderate size, those of the fore central pair being the largest; their position is ordinary, the two rows occupying very nearly the whole width of the fore part of the caput; the clypeus is very low, less than the diameter of one of the fore central eyes. The eyes of each row, severally, appeared to be as nearly as possible equidistant from each other; the four central eyes form a square; those of each lateral pair are contiguous to each other and seated obliquely on a tubercle; all are on black spots, forming a narrow rim to each. The legs are long and rather slender; their relative length is 1, 4, 2, 3 ; and they are furnished with hairs and spines: one of the latter is noticeable ; it is beneath the fore extremity of the metatarsi of the third and fourth (or two hinder) pairs, stronger than the rest, but not so long as some of them, curved and black. Each tarsus ends with two curved pectinated claws, beneath which is a compact scopula. The palpi are short, but appear to be longer, owing to the great size and length of the digital joint and palpal organs. The cubital joint is very short, the radial being somewhat longer; this latter has its outer extremity produced into a small, black, rather bluntish-pointed, very slightly curved apophysis, and is furnished with prominent bristly hairs both on the upper and under side; there is also a small prominence underneath the extremity of the radial joint, rather on the inner side, and a small spur-like spine from near the fore extremity of the upperside. The digital joint is almost as long as the whole of the rest of the palpus ; looked at from above it is of a long, narrow, somewhat sinuous form; the portion beyond the palpal organs, often of considerable length in some species, is in the present species short; the normal spur at the hinder extremity is short, strong, pointed, and directed outwards close over the radial apophysis. The palpal organs have a sort of oval nucleus (with a corneous margin on the outer side) beneath the middle of the digital joint, with a considerable and somewhat membranous extension on all sides projecting far beyond the limits of the joint; this membranous portion is bounded by an extremely long, slender, sinuous, black, filiform spine, which commences on the inner side and appears to terminate in a coil near the centre of the palpal organs. The falces are tolerably strong, rather long ; they project forwards a little, and are slightly divergent; their colour is a deep, rich, blackish red-brown, that of the maxillae and labium being red-brown. The abdomen is of an elongate-oval form, highest before, where it projects a little over the base of the cephalothorax; it is of a dull PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1874, No. XXVII. 27 |