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Show 1876.] REV. O. P. CAMBRIDGE ON EGYPTIAN SPIDERS. 561 quent to Savigny appear merely to have followed him in his figure description. The locality given for H. caudata is " les environs du Caire." On the first morning of my arrival at Cairo, in January 1864,1 found a species of Hersilia frequent on the trunks of the trees in the Esbekeyah, close in front of Zeck's hotel; all were females, in different stages of immaturity. Numerous searches there and in other parts round Cairo failed to produce more than this one species, which I met with again several times during the ascent of the Nile to Assouan. I did not find any other species (except one, of a now separated genus Ilersilidia, under stones at Alexandria) during my stay in Egypt. I cannot, therefore, help thinking that, in spite of very manifest differences between m y specimens and the figure and description of Hersilia caudata given by Walckenaer and Lucas (following Savigny), the species I now record is that upon which the latter author founded the genus. The following description of the examples I met with may perhaps call the attention of araneologists to the differences noted ; and possibly the true H. caudata may eventually prove to be a distinct species, in which case I would propose for that now described the name Hersilia diversa. The length of the largest immature female captured is rather over 3| lines. The colour of the cephalothorax is a deep blackish brown, rather the palest along the middle line, on the hinder slope, and a little above the lateral margins ; the upper part of the caput is black, with a short brightish orange-yellow longitudinal streak on the hinder part between the eyes of the hind central pair. The clypeus (which equals in height two thirds of that of the facial space) is orange-yellow above and dull yellow on its lower part, the middle of which has a short longitudinal white streak with a blackish patch on each side of it. This arrangement of colours gives a very distinct and diversified appearance to the " facies," and appears to be pretty well defined in all the examples met with (vide tig. 6 b). The legs are of a dull yellowish hue, marked and broadly annulated with yellow and blackish-brown; these markings form a broken longitudinal line of deepish black-brown on the fore sides of the femoral joints. The palpi are similar to the legs in colour, and marked with black-brown on their upper or fore sides. The abdomen is of a dull yellowish brown above, thickly punctuated with pale yellowish points mixed with a few blackish ^pots here and there, chiefly near the cephalothorax, the lateral margins of the upperside of the abdomen are very distinctly detined by the inner edge of the black markings on the sides ; this well-defined edge is denticulate or strongly crenellated; along the middle line of the fore half is a strong and very distinct black longitudinal marking, denticulate or irregularly jagged on its edges ; this marking is broadest near its middle, and comes to a blunt point about two thirds of the distance from the cephalothorax to the spinners, and is followed by some broken angular bars, or chevrons, which decrease in length towards the hinder extremity of the abdomen; in addition to the |
