316 NOTES ON THE ARACHNIDA OF EPPING FOREST.
black villainous-looking creature, is found in cellars and out-
houses, behind boards, etc. The sudden apparition of four or
five of these behind one board, revealed by the flickering light of
a candle in a gloomy cellar, is well calculated to quench the
valour of the stoutest naturalist, and usually does so.
Little less alarming is the appearance in one's bedroom of
the "Cardinal Spider," Tegenaria parietina, careering over the
ceiling with its long hairy legs, obviously intending to drop
plump on the bed and devastate the unwilling occupant.
Cardinal Wolsey, in those days in residence at Hampton Court,
was, tradition has it, much terrified at the aspect of these
enormous spiders. Hence their name, though the good cardinal,
if we are to believe historians, had no silly squeamishness with
regard to insects and creeping things in general.
Then, again, the Water Spider, Argyroneta aquatica, one of the
largest and most interesting of our British spiders, though occurr-
ing in many parts of Essex, has, however, only now been definitely
recorded for the county. This is really an interesting spider, for
it takes to the water as though it were its natural element,
swimming with its hairy legs, the body enclosed by a layer of
air entangled in the hairs and glittering like silver as it swims.
The nest, usually called the "diving bell," is made beneath the
surface, and the eggs are laid and the young hatched out
therein. There are many points still to be discovered in the
habits of this and many other spiders which would well repay
the efforts of those who are Field-naturalists and have little
opportunity or inclination to enter the depths of the science in
the studio, with microscope and section-cutter at hand.
I will now, after these few and more or less relevant
remarks, add the list of species which are here recorded for the
first time for the fauna of Epping Forest and Essex, and in
doing so I would appeal to all Field-naturalists to assist, during
the next season, in collecting material for a still larger county
list which will appear shortly in the volume of "Essex," of the
Victorian History of the Counties of England. It would ill become
the Essex Field Club to allow their county to rank with those
which have but one or two recorded species of spiders to offer,
or even haply to sink to the level of those pitiable districts of
which the Arachnologist can scarcely even recall the name.