OCR Text |
Show 44 REV. O. P. CAMBRIDGE ON NEW ARANEIDEA. [Feb. 5, clothed with grey hairs. The spinners are short, and in front of the ordinary ones is a transverse spinning-organ, always found correlated with the calamistrum on the fourth pair of legs. The male, besides being very much smaller than the female, has the cephalothorax of a very deep black-brown hue, with a marginal stripe on each side and in from; of white hairs, and a narrow longitudinal stripe of the same kind bisecting the ocular area, and a few other white hairs near the posterior eyes and on the occiput. The legs are longer than in the female, especially those of the first pair; they are of a bright orange-red colour, the femora and tibise of the first pair suffused with blackish, the tibise rather enlarged and thickly clothed with long black hairs ; besides other hairs all the legs are furnished more or less with some white ones on their upper side. The abdomen is of a deep black-brown hue, with a pale yellow-brown longitudiual central tapering stripe, clothed with white hairs, and reaching a transverse bar of the same kind just above the spinners; and on the underside are two oblique, elongate pale spots or patches similarly clothed, and placed transversely near the spiracular plates. The palpi are short and of a black-brown hue ; the radial joint is shorter than the cubital; this latter joint has a fore margin of conspicuous white hairs ; digital joint rather large, and its fore extremity drawn out. The palpal organs are simple, consisting of a roundish basal bulb, with a somewhat twisted paler process at its anterior side reaching not quite to the end of the digital joint. The sternum is black, clothed with coarse pale grey hairs. A nest of this spider containing numerous live individuals of both sexes, some adult, some immature, was sent a short time ago by Col. Bowker, from Durban, to Lord Walsingham, who, kindly acting on my suggestion, sent the whole to this Society's Gardens, where, as I understand from Mr. Arthur Thomson, in whose care they are placed, the whole family are in a very active and thriving state. The nest is of considerable size, and filled a box of 2 feet long by 9 inches wide and 5 deep. Above this nest I hear that the spiders have now spun lines up to the top of the case in which they have been placed, as though for the ensnaring of flies, &c. ; but as their work is entirely nocturnal, no observations have yet been practicable in respect to this most interesting part of a spider's economy. They appear to devour cockroaches and crickets, tearing them to pieces in concert, and each carrying off his share of the prey, like a pack of hounds breaking up a fox. This spider is allied to Stegodyphus acanthophilus, Dufour, of Southern Europe, Palestine, and Syria, but is smaller, differs greatly in colour and markings, and is, so far as I am aware, unique in its gregarious habits. Some of the examples had died during the lon°- transit from Durban to England, and from these the descriptions have been made. |