European Spiders

Abstract

FEW branches, perhaps, of entomological science show the effects of independent and isolated labours more strikingly than Arachnology—limiting this term here to the order Araneidea (or Araneæ). The great works of N. Westring on Swedish Spiders, published in 1861, that of Mr. Blackwall on those of Great Britain and Ireland, published 1861–64, and the “Catalogue Synonymique des Araneides d'Europe,” by M. Eugène Simon (included in his general work “Histoire Naturelle des Araignées,” published 1864), are an instance representing very strongly the fruits of this isolated labour in the same branch of natural history science. These authors appear to have been, and indeed, it is believed, actually were—the two former at all events—totally ignorant of each other's existence. M. Simon, indeed, quotes Mr. Blackwall occasionally in his “Catalogue Synonymique,” but his knowledge of that author's works was apparently confined to the scanty and often erroneous quotations in Baron Walckenäers' “Insectes Aptéres.” Mr. Blackwafl then and M. Westring, each in his own way and with the works of other authors more or less at their common command, plodded on for years in parallel paths. Both worked diligently and laboriously, at, for a very great part, as a glance at the map would suggest, identical objects; their labours at length resulting in the respective volumes above mentioned. So much as this however can hardly be said in regard to the third one of the works noted. The “Catalogue Synonyimique” bears few marks of labour at the objects themselves which it enumerates, and is in fact a mere desk work, remarkable chiefly for the limited and often infelicitous use of the materials undoubtedly available at that epoch to any author professing to gather together and to harmonise the independent and scattered morsels of an extensive branch of natural science. The good work, however, done since, and being now daily done in Arachnology by M. Simon, will soon obliterate the remembrance of the comparative failure of the more ambitious efforts of his early years.

Remarks on Synonyms of European Spiders.

By T. Thorell, Junior Professor of Zoology in the University of Upsala. (Upsala, 1870–73, pp. 1–644.)