OCR Text |
Show 1879.] SPIDERS F R O M N E W ZEALAND. 689 facial space. The colour of the cephalothorax is a deep reddish brown ; the surface is finely rugulose, and furnished with a few coarse hairs. The eyes are placed in two transverse and about equally curved rows, forming a long narrow oval figure, occupying the whole width of the fore part of the caput; those of the fore-central pair are the largest, and are seated on a tubercular prominence, being also very nearly contiguous to each other; those of each lateral pair (which are rather widely removed from the four central eyes) are seated on a strongish tubercle; those of the hind-central pair form a line rather longer than the fore-centrals, and are separated from each other by a little more than a diameter's interval, an interval of about 11 diameter also separating each from the hind-lateral eye on its side. The legs are very slender ; their relative length 1, 2, 4, 3; those of the first pair very long, of the second pair rather shorter; those of the third and fourth pairs very much shorter. They are furnished with fine hairs, and each has three slender spine-like bristles. Those of the two first pairs are of a reddish yellow-brown colour, the two hinder pairs being pale dull yellowish, broadly annulated with dark brown. The palpi are slender, of a pale whitish-yellow hue, excepting the fore part of the radial and the digital joint, which are reddish brown. The falces are strong, rather lighter-coloured than the cephalothorax, a little divergent at their extremities, prominent at their base in front, and furnished with very fine tubercles or granulations on their outer sides. The maxillee are of normal form, and of a dark-brown colour; the labium is rather darker; and the sternum is similar in colour to the falces. The abdomen, looked at from above, is of an oval form, broadest in front, and obtuse behind: in profile it is triangular. On the upperside it is black, with a central longitudinal yellowish-white stripe ; terminating short of tbe extremity in a triangular form, on each side of this, but shorter than it, is a narrower longitudinal curved stripe of the same hue ; and following each curved stripe are two other short oblique stripes of the same colour and in the same longitudinal line. The sides are reddish, marked obscurely with several oblique pale stripes ; the underside between the spinners and the extreme point of the abdomen is black, with a short longitudinal pale stripe just beneath the point. Spinners short, of a pale whitish-brown hue, and deeply imbedded in a circular kind of cavity at the lower angle of the abdomen. The genital aperture has a small slender, cylindrical, pale prominent process connected with it. A single example of this pretty species was contained in Mr, Atkinson's New-Zealand collection. |