OCR Text |
Show 187.7.] REV. O. P. CAMBRIDGE ON NEW ARANEIDEA. 575 fore ones, being also separated from each other by two diameters, the distance from each to the eye of the hinder row on its side being somewhat greater than this. The tubercles, at the extremity of which the foremost eyes of the outer quadrangle are placed, are directed strongly outwards and downwards. The legs are brown, slightly tinged with yellow, and furnished with hairs and a few short spines. The calamistra on the metatarsi of the fourth pair begin close to the hinder extremity of the joint, rather on the inner side, and continue along it for about one third of its length ; the terminal tarsal joint of the first pair is less than a fourth of the length of the normal joint. The palpi are similar to the legs in colour and annulation. The falces are long, strong, perpendicular, aud divergent, and of a dark, slightly yellowish brown colour. The maxillce and labium are of a similar hue, the apex of the latter and the inner sides of the former being of a pale whitish colour. The maxillae are also rather closely fringed with hairs on their inner sides and at their extremities. The sternum is of a dark brown and dull orange-yellowish hue mixed. The abdomen was much shrunken; but its form is apparently elongate-oval, truncated in front, broad across the middle, where there is a strong somewhat conically pointed prominence on each side. It is clothed with short hairs; and the femoral hue is a mixture of brown-grey and reddish-yellow. The lateral prominences are joined by a somewhat raised transverse curved ridge clothed with grey hairs, the colour of the abdomen in front of the ridge being dark reddish yellow-brown ; and extending from it to the spinners is a broad dentated paler yellow-brown band. A single example of this very interesting and important Spider was received, among numerous examples of other groups, from Rockhampton, Australia, through Mr. E. W . Janson, in the present year (1877). The relation of this Spider to Dinopis and Menneus is noted above. Fam. SALTICIDES. Gen. nov. ATHAMAS. This genus is closely allied to Lyssomanes, Hentz, as well as to Jelskia, Tacz. It differs, however, from both in the shortness of the cephalothorax and also of the abdomen. From Lyssomanes, Hentz, it differs in the superior and inferior spinners being of equal length, whereas in that genus those of the superior pair are much longer, slender, and three-jointed. Cephalothorax short, massive, quadrate, very convex above; the sides and hinder slope almost vertical. Eyes very unequal in size, disposed in four transverse lines of two each, and almost of the same length. Legs rather slender, and moderately long; those of the first pair longest, and of the second pair shortest. |