OCR Text |
Show 1875.] NEW SPECIES OF ERIGONE. 397 equidistant from each other, the hind centrals being each placed immediately in front of a round shining pale-coloured tubercle ; those of each lateral pair have a round shining tubercle behind them, they are contiguous to each other, and obliquely placed ; and from behind each of these pairs a longitudinal narrow indentation, fringed with a row of bristly hairs, runs backwards and obliquely upwards towards the hinder part of the occiput; the eyes of the fore central pair are smallest of the eight, near together, but not contiguous to each other, and each is separated from the fore lateral eye nearest to it by nearly the diameter of the latter. The legs are moderate in length and strength ; their relative lengths appear to be 4, 1, 2, 3 ; they are of a pale dull yellow colour, furnished with hairs and one or two fine black spines. The palpi are short and similar in colour to the legs, except the digital joint, which is suffused with brown; the cubital and radial joints are very short; the latter is a little roundly produced at the fore extremity on its outer side, where it has a not very large pointed apophysis ; the digital joint is very large, and has a strong lobe towards the fore extremity on the outer side ; the palpal organs are well developed and complex, a strong black tapering spine issues from their midst, and curving round inwards, almost encircles their fore extremity, and within its curve is a smaller spine coiled in a circular form. The falces are rather paler in colour than the cephalothorax ; they are tolerably long and strong, a little rounded in their profile-line, and divergent towards their extremities when looked at from the front; they are furnished with a few minute teeth towards their extremities on the inner margin, and close above them three bristles in a single row directed downwards. The maxilla are of normal form, similar to the legs in colour, and furnished with some long and strong bristles towards their outer sides. The labium is also of normal form, and (with the sternum, which is heart-shaped, convex, and bristly) is of a dark brown colour. The abdomen is oval, tolerably convex above, and projects but very slightly over the base of the cephalothorax; almost unique hitherto among the numerous species of this genus, it has, like the foregoing species, a strong well-defined pattern on its upperside, very nearly resembling that of Amaurobins ferox (C. Koch); its colours are black and dull yellow, tinged (in four examples) with a slight reddish hue • and according as one or the other of these colours prevail, either maybe described as the ground-colour. In the example now figured and described (Plate XLVI. fig 4), the ground-colour of the upper-side is black, the fore half has two large yellowish patches on either side, followed by a series of slightly oblique spots or blotches of a similar colour, arranged in pairs, and diminishing in size as they approach the spinners ; the sides are black, divided by an indistinct oblique yellowish gap ; and the underside is dull yellowish, the central longitudinal line being clouded with a dusky hue. When the yellow prevail?, the black forms a central longitudinal bar, from the hinder half of which a series of several oblique lateral bars issue on either |