No. 7 — N^otes on the Spiders of the Virgin Islands By Elizabeth B. Bryant The Virgin Islands, a group of small islands in the West Indies, lie south and east of Puerto Rico. The fifty or more islands cover ap-proximately two hundred and fifty square miles. The largest, St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John, have been inhabited for many years, and at times have been intensively cultivated. The first comprehensive study made of the Virgin Island spiders was by Dr. Alexander Petrunkevitch, whose "Spiders of the Virgin Islands" was based on a collection made by himself in September, 1925, and one made by Dr. Clarence R. Shoemaker in 1915. These two collections contained thirty-five species, of which eleven were described as new, eight from the Shoemaker collection. Twelve species had been recorded by earlier writers. Some of these have been found since on other islands, but four have never been recognized again. Of these four, three were described by C. Koch in "Die Arach-niden", 1836-1848, Mygale drassiformis, Evophrys vetusta and Marpissa incerta. The descriptions are vague and the figures are poor, so unless the type specimens are still in existence, the species will probably re-main unidentifiable. The fourth, Trochanteria ranuncida Karsch, 1879, was in a paper of descriptions of miscellaneous spiders, mostly from the far east, with the locality, "Sta. Cruz." The species has never been found since, and it is possible that it is from another place of the same name. Aside from miscellaneous material, the Museum of Comparative Zoology has two collections of spiders from the Virgin Islands. The first was received from Dr. C. R. Wilson in 1922, while he was at the United States Experiment Station, St. Croix. It is a small collection, but each specimen has complete data. The second collection was re-ceived recently from Harry A. Beatty of Christiansted, St. Croix. The specimens are from that island. It contains a large number of very small spiders that are usually overlooked by casual collectors. The Wilson and Beatty collections contain sixty-eight species, seven-teen of which are new. So today the list of Virgin Island species numbers ninety-three, including the four uncertain ones. Although obviously not exhaustive, since all collections have been from the three largest islands only, we now have a substantial basis for a study of the spider fauna of the island, and its comparison with those of other islands of the West Indies.
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