212 REV. O. P. CAMBRIDGE ON THE [Feb. 20, These facts might support Lord Monboddo's theory of the gradual disappearance of tails ! 5. General List of the Spiders of Palestine and Syria, with Descriptions of numerous new Species and Characters of two new Genera. By the Rev. O. P. Cambridge, M.A., C.M.Z.S. [Received February 2, 1872.] (Plates XIII.-XVI.) The following list and descriptions have been prepared from a collection of Araneidea made by myself during a two-months' ride through the Holy Land, between the 16th of March and the 18th of May 1865. A continuous journey on horseback is not favourable for collect-ing objects of natural history ; but riding through Palestine is not a very rapid affair, and it was therefore usually possible to keep up on foot with the general cavalcade, and so to collect insects and spiders &c. by the way during the greater part of the day. By these means, and by a rather more lengthened sojourn than eastern travellers are commonly in the habit of making on the Jordan Plains, my collection of insects in general amounted to about 700 species of all orders, and of Spiders (Araneidea) to about 300 spe-cies ; of these last, however, some . few were indeterminable from being in an immature state, 2/8 being determinable. Besides these, various species (not yet worked out) of other orders of Arachnida were captured, viz. : — Acaridea, Phalangidea, Solpugidea, and Scor-pionidea. The general report of Palestine, either as an entomo-logical or arachnological district, can scarcely be favourable ; except in the more wooded localities, the country is too dry and barren, and it required far harder work to search for either insects or Spiders than is commonly necessary in most districts of Europe. I fre-quently worked for half an hour without during that time finding a single Spider ; and the results of a day's work would often be no more than a dozen species, while numbers of the species found were represented by only single examples, or at most by one of each sex. About one half (136) of the species of Spiders found were met with on the plains of the Jordan, and, for the most part, within a circuit of about a mile from Elisha's Well (Ain es Sultan). A sojourn there of eight or nine days enabled me to work this district pretty closely ; of the Spiders found there, 73 species were not found elsewhere, though probably many of them might be if other parts were equally well searched. The following analysis of the collection will give some idea of the distribution of the 278 determined species among the different fami-lies and genera of Araneidea : —
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