OCR Text |
Show 1876.] REV. O. P. CAMBRIDGE ON EGYPTIAN SPIDERS. 621 orange-yellow-brown colour; the ocular area is thickly clothed with whitish or yellowish grey squamose adpressed hairs. The thoracic region has two longitudinal bands of white hairs, running backward from the eyes of the posterior row ; these bands are often coalescent with other whitish hairs on the sides and hinder slope and those on the ocular area ; in some examples a marginal band of white hairs is traceable; some examples have the sides and hinder slope clothed with reddish yellow hairs, and in these the white stripes show very distinctly ; the clypeus, which is less in height than half the diameter of the fore central eyes, is clothed with pale dull scarlet (or perhaps, more correctly speaking, brick-red) hairs. The ocular area is broader than long, the hinder row being a little longer than the foremost one. The legs are strong and moderately long ; their relative length is- 4, 1, 2, 3, those of the fourth pair, especially the femoral joints, being considerably the longest; their colour is yellow, furnished with hairs, bristles, and spines, the hairs being chiefly of a whitish hue, and the scopula beneath the tarsal claws blackish. The palpi are short and resemble the legs in colour, and are pretty thickly furnished with long bristly white hairs ; the radial joint is very short, shorter than the cubital, and has a blunt pointed yellow-brown apophysis at its outer extremity, tipped with black ; the digital joint is long and of a narrow oblong oval form, clothed at the tip with black hairs; the palpal organs are large and of a somewhat globular form, they extend backwards beneath the radial joint, and are of a dark yellow-brown colour. The falces are small and of a deep yellow-brown colour. The maxilla, labium, and sternum are yellow, clothed thinly with coarse grey hairs. The abdomen is small, oval, and hairy ; its colour is yellow ; and it has a broad longitudinal central band, on its upperside, of an orange yellow-brown colour, often of a deep red-brown on the fore half, and showing traces of the normal curved or angular bars, or chevrons, of a dark yellow-brown colour on the hinder half; the sides have a longitudinal ill-defined orange-brown band, in some examples represented by a few short oblique stripes of that colour; the underside is of a pale straw yellow without any markings. The female has the legs and palpi sometimes slightly annulated with dark brown, and the central abdominal stripe sometimes of a dark brown colour, and more dentated on the edges of the hinder part than in the male ; in other respects the sexes are very much alike. Adults of both sexes were found among the stems and at the roots of scattered stunted plants on the desert near Jebel y Silsilis. It is an exceedingly active Spider, the length of its leaps being remarkable, its long "hind legs giving it no doubt great powers of jumping. Although so nearly resembling Attus bonnetii in colours and markings, the length of its hind legs will distinguish it readily. It is probably a common Spider, inasmuch as the seven examples I found were all at the base of one tuft of herbage. P R O C ZOOL. Soc-1876, No. XLI. 41 |