OCR Text |
Show 1874.] NEW SPECIES OF ERIGONE. 433 them ; each fore central eye forms, with the fore lateral and bind central on its side, as nearly as possible an equilateral triangle. The legs are rather long and slender; their relative length is 4, 1, 2, 3; they are of a clear light orange-yellow colour, furnished with hairs and a few slender erect bristles ; and each tarsus ends with three small black claws. The palpi are short, tolerably strong, and similar in colour to the legs, except the radial and digital joints, which have a dark greenish olive hue; the cubital joint is long, nearly as long as the humeral joint, and enlarges gradually to its fore extremity. The radial joint is exceedingly short; it is a little prominent behind, and has a group of small hairs on its outer side ; its fore part is produced into a long curved apophysis, having its sharp somewhat thorn-like and rather suddenly-formed point directed outwards and rather upwards. The digital joint is small and of a roundish oval form. The palpal organs are highly developed, prominent, and rather complex ; from their extremity on the outer side there curves out a long, slender, tapering, sharp-pointed prominent nearly straight spine : this spine is very conspicuous and characteristic from its straightness. The falces are moderate in length and strength, of a yellow-brown colour, and present no remarkable feature. The maxilla are strong, the basal portion exceedingly so; they are curved and inclined to the labium, which is short and semicircular. The maxillae are rather paler in colour than the falces, and whitish at their extremities ; the labium is darkest, with a pale apex. The sternum is large, heart-shaped, convex, and very glossy, of a dark yellow-brown colour suffused with blackish. The abdomen is oval, tolerably convex above, and projects a little over the base of the cephalothorax; it is of a dull blackish colour, marked above with some lines and spots of a clear yellow-brown (probably not very visible except when in spirit of wine), and clothed pretty thickly with coarse hairs. An adult female which accompanied the male above described was rather larger and darker-coloured; the occiput was simply rounded; the height of the clypeus much less, and the eyes of the hinder row equidistant from each other. These differences are frequently observable in females of those Erigona whose males have gibbosities and eminences on the caput; and it is most probable that the two Spiders here described are, as their captor has supposed, the sexes of the same species ; still it is quite possible they may not be so. The genital aperture is small, and of a very simple form. These two Spiders, of which the male is an exceedingly interesting and distinct form, allied to E. apicata (Bl.), E. retusa (Westr.), and still more nearly to E. excisa (Cambr.), were received from Mr. Emerton, of Boston, Massachusetts, by whom they were captured in that neighbourhood (Milton, Mass.) among moss, in October 1873. ERIGONE L^ETA, sp. n. (Plate LV. fig. 4.) Adult male, length |- line. The cephalothorax is of an ordinary short-oval form : the caput has |