On British Arachnida,

NOTED AND OBSERVED IN 1909.

By Rev. O. PICKARD-CAMBRIDGE, M.A., F.R.S., &c.

PLATE A.

I

AM still indebted to the kind assistance of correspondents for the greater part of the materials on which the following remarks are based. With their help, the result of the past year's collecting and observations enables me to record the addition of several species to the British and Irish List. Of these, two are, it is believed, new to science, and three others are recorded as new to the British list. These last three are specially remarkable, having been described and figured by myself many years ago; two in 1872 (Notioscopus sarcinatus, Cambr., and Cornicularia Kochii, Cambr.) from Bavaria and Warsaw, and the third (Hypselistes florens Cambr.), from Boston in North America in 1875; since those dates (excepting a male of C. Kochii from Holland in 1889) no record of their occurrence has been made until their discovery now in England. Further reference will be made to these in the subjoined list. I must here mention a fine Clubiona received from Mr. W. P. Winter, of Shipley, Yorkshire. This appears to be undoubtedly new to science (on this spider see postea, p. 68). Besides the above, I have received several very rare species from the New Forest; two

were sent to me by Mr. Horace Donisthorpe, and one by Dr. A. R. Jackson; the two former were first recorded as British from a single specimen of each, found in the Bloxworth district, Dorset, in 1854, and the other from several immature examples found by myself in the New Forest in 1858. Since these dates neither of them has been met with until this past year. Further notes on these also are added (postea); their names are Xysticus robustus, Hahn, and Xysticus luctator, L. Koch (two of the largest and handsomest of the European Thomisids or crab-spiders), the third being Oxyopes heterophthalmus, Latr., whose nearest allies are continental and exotic.

I have now again to thank my many friends and correspondents for their kind assistance during the past year; especially among them Dr. A. Randell Jackson, M.B., D.Sc., of Chester; Mr. Horace Donisthorpe, 58, Kensington Mansions, London; Mr. William Falconer, Slaithwaite, near Huddersfield; Mr. Denis Packe-Beresford, Bagenalstown, Ireland; the Rev. J. E. Hull, Whitfield, Northumberland; Mr. W. Ruskin Butterfield, Hastings, Sussex; Mr. F. P. Smith, 15, Cloudesley Place, Islington; Mr. W. P. Winter, Shipley, Yorkshire; Mr. H. H. Harrison, Birtley, Durham; Mr. G. A. Dunlop, Stockton Heath, Cheshire; Mr. Wallis Kew, 12, Werndon Road, Wandsworth ; Mr. F. T. Palmer, Cheltenham; Mr. J. H. Keys, Plymouth; Rev. J. H. Bloom, Whitchurch, Stratford-on-Avon; Mr. Eustace R. Bankes, Norden, Corfe Castle; Dr. Sharp, Brockenhurst; Dr. Grierson, Great Grimsby; Mr. Cecil Warburton, Cambridge; Mr. A. G. Burton, Goole; and Dr. G. H. Oliver, M.D., Bradford, Yorkshire.

If further information is required on any of the Arachnids in the following list, I would refer to "Spiders of Dorset," 1879-81; and to Papers published since, in its annual Proceedings, 1882-1909, by the Dorset Field Club; as well as to the "List of British and Irish Spiders" (Sime and Co. : 1900). Also, for information upon some of the less numerous groups of British Arachnids, I would refer to "Monographs

on the British Phalangidea or Harvest Men, 1890 " (Vol. XI.), and on the British Chernetidea, or False Scorpions, 1892 (Vol. XIII.), published in the Dorset Field Club Proceedings.

I should mention here that Papers have also been published during the past year on some British Spiders, by the Rev. J. E. Hull (Trans. Nat. Hist. Soc. of Northumberland, Durham, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, n.s., Vol. III., Part 2, and" Naturalist," 1909, August 1), and by Mr. W. Falconer, "Naturalist," August and September, 1909, and February, 1910. Mr. T. Stainforth, of the Municipal Museum, Hull, also gives a List of East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire Arachnids in Trans. of the Hull Scientific and Field Naturalists' Club.

I must not conclude these few introductory remarks without thanking the Dorset Field Club most heartily for having so long continued to publish my annual remarks and notes on a subject not congenial (to say the least of it) to the greater part of our members. I wish I could report that my efforts had prevailed upon some, or some one of them at least, to take up this special branch of natural history investigation; but the coming student of arachnology among our Dorset Natural History and Field Club members is still coming, though when he or she may arrive who shall say?

LIST OF NEW AND RARE BRITISH ARACHNIDA.

Order ARANEIDEA.

Fam. THERAPHOSIDE.

Atypus affinis, Eichwald.

In the Proc. Dors. N.H. and A.F. Club XXIX. (1908), p. 164, it is stated that A. affinis, Eich., is the only British representative of the family. This was an oversight, as another species was found by the late Mr. Richard Beck at St. Leonard's, near Hastings. (Atypus Beckii, Cambr.), vide Spid. Dorset, Vol. I., p. 4.