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 at the foot, the design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521
PREFACE
THE modest dimensions of this book are perhaps sufficient indication that it is not intended as an aid to the collector. There are about five hundred and fifty known species of spiders in the United Kingdom alone, and at least an equal number of pages would be needed to describe them.
Our concern is with the habits and modes of life of spiders—especially of such as are most frequently met with and most easily recognised, and the reader, especially if he is fortunate enough to spend an occasional holiday in southern Europe, will find little in the following pages which he cannot verify—or disprove—by his own observations. Indeed the hope that some of his readers may be induced to investigate on their own account has actuated the writer throughout, and has led him to lay considerable stress upon the methods of research and the ingeniously devised experiments by means of which whatever knowledge we possess has been obtained.