OCR Text |
Show 1874.] NEW SPECIES OF ERIGONE. 439 and projects a good deal, but not very closely, over the base of the cephalothorax; it is of a very pale straw-colour, the upper surface covered with a coriaceous finely punctuose epidermis of an orange colour, with four not very distinct brownish yellow impressed spots in the middle, forming a rectangular figure whose fore side is much the shortest; the spiracular plates and a small portion on the sides and in front of the spinners are similar in colour to the epidermis on the upperside ; the abdomen is thinly clothed with short hairs ; the sides and underside are also covered with minute punctures, giving it a speckled appearance. The female resembles the male in colours and general characters; but the fore part of the caput is uncleft, and the coriaceous epidermis on the upperside of the abdomen is much smaller, only reaching halfway to the spinners, while in the male it leaves only one third bare ; the genital aperture is small and simple in form, being apparently a small transverse oval. Adults of both sexes of this Spider were contained in Mr. J. H. Emerton's collection; it is allied both to E. capito (Westr.) and E. perforata (Thor.), but quite distinct and easily recognizable from both ; more nearly also it is allied to E. atriceps (Cambr.) (suprh, p. 436). ERIGONE DIRECTA, sp. n. (Plate LV. fig. 9.) Adult male, length 1 line. The cephalothorax, falces, maxillee, labium, and sternum of this Spider are of a uniform yellow-brown colour; the legs and palpi (except the digital and radial joints of the latter, which are darker) yellow, tinged with orange, and the abdomen dull black; the form of the cephalothorax is elongate-oval, the caput being rather prominent or drawn out in the ocular region, from the midst of which there projects forwards a nearly straight cylindrical prominence having the same direction (or as nearly so as possible) as the profile-line of the cephalothorax; in fact this prominence is a continuation from between the eyes of the caput, and it has close to the extremity several short reversed bristles, the extremity being somewhat obliquely truncated ; the height of the clypeus exceeds, but not greatly, half that of the facial space, and it is a little impressed above its lower margin near the middle ; the normal grooves and indentations are but slightlv indicated. The eyes are in four pairs, forming a round-oval close round the base of the prominence at the apex of the caput; they are of tolerable size, those of the fore central pair being the smallest and contiguous to each other; those of each lateral pair are also contiguous to each other; each fore lateral eye is very near to but separated from the fore central on its side ; and each hind lateral is no more than its own diameter distant from the hind central on its side, the hind centrals being no more than half an eye's diameter from each other; all except the fore centrals, which are dark, are pearly white, narrowly margined with black, and very distinct. The legs are long and slender, their relative length being 4, 1,2, 3, |