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Show 1897.] MR. R. I. POCOCK ON ETHIOPIAN SPIDERS. 749 specimens, including the one from Somaliland, the carapace is only a little longer than the 4th tarsus and protarsus, and a little less than the three terminal segments of the 3rd leg. That the difference is not to be relied upon as of specific importance seems shown by the circumstance that of two of the Museum specimens taken by tbe same collector, presumably in the same locality, one resembles the type in length of leg-segments, and the other the Pondoland specimens. Unfortunately I have seen no male example of this species. Possibly the discovery of members of this sex will show that some of the forms here identified as tigrina are in reality specifically separable. HARPACTIRA ATRA (Latr.). Mygale atra, Latreille, Nouv. Ann. Mus. d'hist. nat. i. p. 70 (1832). Mygale funebra, Walckenaer, Ins. Apt. i. p. 226 (1837). Mygale coracina, C. Koch, Die Arachn. ix. p. 37, fig. 714 (1842). There can I think be no doubt that the species named coracina by C. Koch is identical with that previously described by Latreille as atra, which Walckenaer intentionally renamed funebra. The British Museum possesses an adult male and female from Simon's Town (H. de la Garde), one young female from Hoets Bay, near Cape Town (H. A. Spencer), a second young female from Worcester, Cape Colony (H. A. Spencer), and an adult male from Zululand (J. P. Angus), as well as specimens, male and female, without special locality. Some of the distinctive features of this species are set forth in the subjoined table. HARPACTIRA LINEATA, sp. n. 2 .-Colour. Hairy clothing of carapace greenish black, passing into ochre-yellow at the sides : the plate ornamented as in H. tigrina, but less definitely, with obscurely defined whitish lines radiating from the fovea; hairs on legs longish, greyish black, those on the sides and lower surface of the femora foxy red; sternum and coxae obscure blackish brown. Carapace exceeding in length the patella and tibia of the 4th leg as well as of the 1st, just about equal to the tarsus and protarsus of the 4th but distinctly less than the tibia, protarsus, and tarsus of the 3rd, and shorter by three quarters of the length of the tarsus than the same segments of the 2nd leg, and just equal to the tibia and protarsus of the 1st. Legs 4, 1, 2, 3, the 4th a little longer than the 1st; patella and tibia of 1st longer than those of 4th, tarsu3 and protarsus of 3rd equal to those of 1st. Mandible with the upper series of notes less oblique and less regularly arranged than in the other species, e. g. tigrina, and consisting of a nearly horizontal set of about 10 bristles; the lower series consisting of a cluster of short spines, which, however, are not separated from the adjacent bristles behind the oral fringe. PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1897, No. XLIX. 49 |