OCR Text |
Show 1877.] FROM DUKE-OF-YORK ISLAND ETC. 285 the examples received had been subjected to so much maltreatment that the armature and clothing of the legs were almost destroyed. The palpi are moderate in length and strength, and are apparently similar in colour and armature to the legs. The falces are tolerably long and strong, straight, perpendicular, rounded (in profile) towards their base in front, and similar in colour to the cephalothorax, though perhaps of a rather duller hue. The maxillce are of normal form, of a deep blackish red-brown colour, with a pale anterior margin. The labium is short, somewhat rounded at the apex, of an orange-yellow colour, paler at the apex, and with a deep reddish-brown patch on each side. The sternum is somewhat heart-shaped and of an orange-yellow colour, clothed with greyish hairs. The abdomen is large, of a rather flattened form, truncated before, broadest across the middle, behind which, on each side, are three largish rounded lobes giving the margins of the hinder extremity a strongly sinuous appearance; the hinder extremity is also lobi-form, and beneath it to the spinners, over which it projects considerably, the surface is strongly rugulose. The upperside is dark dull brown thickly covered with rather yellowish or whitish cretaceous spots, as far as the second marginal lobes, behind which the colour is yellowish brown, spotted thinly with pale spots ; the posterior half of the abdomen exhibited traces of variously shaped patches (apparently symmetrical in their uninjured state) of white, silky pubescence ; the sides are a mixture of yellow-brown, dark brown, and black, spotted with yellowish, as well as with patches and lines of greyish hairs. The underside is deep brown, with a broad yellow marginal band edged outside with a whitish border, which encircles the areas of the spinners, and has two lateral projecting portions on each side between the spinners and the genital aperture ; this last consists of two oval openings, one on each side, in front of a largish, transverse, oval, nearly black prominence. The fore half of the upperside has six impressed blackish spots, in three transverse pairs succeeding each other in a longitudinal direction. The above description has been collected from the fragments of four examples; it cannot, therefore, be looked upon as altogether satisfactory, though there will be found sufficient distinctive specific characters to render the species recognizable. In its perfect state it is probably a very beautiful spider, aiTd is allied to, though quite distinct from the common South-American species Argiope argentata, Fabr. Family GASTERACANTHIDES. Genus GASTERACANTHA. GASTERACANTHA PANISICCA. Gasteracanthapanisicca, Butler, Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond. May 1873, p. 162, pl. iv. fig. 14. Two females of this distinct Spider were contained in Mr. Brown's |