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Show 1876.] REV, O. P. CAMBRIDGE ON EGYPTIAN SPIDERS. 589 most row are equally separated from each other, the four central eyes describing a square whose fore side is shorter than the rest: the interval between those of each lateral pair is about equal to the diameter of one of them. The legs are long, and moderate in strength; their relative length is apparently 2, I, 4, 3, or 2, 4, 1,3; their colour is yellow, the undersides of the femora of the first and second pairs being speckled with small red-brown spots, chiefly disposed in two longitudinal parallel lines ; they are furnished with hairs and a few long spines (of different lengths); and the metatarsi and tarsi are furnished beneath with a scopula. The palpi are moderately long and strong; they are similar to the legs in colour ; the humeral joints are furnished with a few spinelike bristles towards the fore extremity on the upperside ; and there are a few finer long bristles on the other joints : the radial joint is double the length of the cubital, and has a tolerably long, slightly curved, deep red-brown and rather slender apophysis at its extremity on the outer side ; this apophysis is of a slightly tapering form, but is obtusely pointed : the digital joint is elongate-oval in form, rather longer than the radial and cubital joints together ; its colour is yellow-brown ; and it is hairy, terminating in a single small curved claw : the palpal organs are small and simple, and, although characteristic, present no noteworthy processes, nor do they extend more than halfway towards the extremity of the joint. The falces are moderate in length and strength, straight, though projecting a little forwards, and rounded iu profile; they are cf a yellow-brown colour, paler on their inner sides towards the extremity. The maxilla are moderately long and strong, nearly straight, and roundly truncated at their extremities, their colour is dull yellow-brown, but pale at the extremities. The labium is very short and small, and nearly semicircular iu form, of a dull yellow-brown colour, pale at the apex ; and the sternum is yellow. The abdomen is of an oblong-oval form ; its colour is a dull testaceous, more or less mottled on the upperside with clearer yellow cretaceous spots, and it is thinly clothed with greyish yellow hairs ; an ordinary elongated, central, longitudinal yellow-brown marking, defined by a margin of bright red-brown spots, occupies the fore half of the upperside, and its acute termination is continued by a single line of similar spots to the spinners; a few other small spots of the same colour are thinly but pretty evenly dispersed over the rest of the upper surface ; the underside is immaculate. The female resembles the male, except in being of a stouter build ; the genital aperture is small, of a somewhat heart-shaped and characteristic form, with a blackish red-brown corneous margin. An adult and an immature male and an adult female were found at the roots of scattered tufts of herbage on the desert near Gebel y Silsilis, in Upper Egypt. Although nearly allied to Sparassus linnai (Sav.), t may be at once distinguished not only by a difference in the rela- PROC. ZOOL. Soc-1876, NO. XXXIX. 39 |