The Cambridge Manuals of Science andLiterature

SPIDERS

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
London: FETTER LANE, E.C.
C. F. CLAY, Manager

Edinburgh: 100, PRINCES STREET
London: WILLIAM WESLEY & SON, 28, ESSEX STREET, STRAND
Berlin: A. ASHER AND CO.
Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS
New York: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd.

All rights reserved

The Banana Spider, natural size, from a photograph byMr James Adams.

SPIDERS

BY

CECIL WARBURTON, M.A.

Christ’s College
Zoologist to the Royal Agricultural
Society



Cambridge:
at the University Press
1912

Cambridge:
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

With the exception of the coat of arms atthe foot, the design on the title page is areproduction of one used by the earliest knownCambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521

PREFACE

THE modest dimensions of this book are perhapssufficient indication that it is not intended asan aid to the collector. There are about five hundredand fifty known species of spiders in the UnitedKingdom alone, and at least an equal number ofpages would be needed to describe them.

Our concern is with the habits and modes of lifeof spiders—especially of such as are most frequentlymet with and most easily recognised, and the reader,especially if he is fortunate enough to spend anoccasional holiday in southern Europe, will find littlein the following pages which he cannot verify—ordisprove—by his own observations. Indeed the hopethat some of his readers may be induced to investigateon their own account has actuated the writer throughout,and has led him to lay considerable stress uponthe methods of research and the ingeniously devisedexperiments by means of which whatever knowledgewe possess has been obtained.

CECIL WARBURTON

Cambridge

March, 1912

CONTENTS