Lycosa cinerea.—A common spider on beaches and sandy fields all over this country and in Europe [(fig. 177)] The general color is dirty white covered with small black and gray marks, so that, when it lies flat on the sand, it can hardly be distinguished from it. The body is half an inch long, and the fourth legs nearly an inch. The under side is white or gray, and the whole body covered with white and gray hairs. The legs are marked with indistinct dark rings, two or three to each joint. On the cephalothorax the spots radiate irregularly from the dorsal groove; the space between the eyes is dark, and the mandibles are dark brown. The markings of the abdomen are broken up into small spots, so that there is little of the usual figures. The male palpi are long and slender and the ends very small.

Lycosa kochii.—This is a common species in the woods, and is colored brown and gray, like dead leaves [(fig. 179)]. It is half an inch long when full grown, and the fourth legs three-quarters of an inch. The upper eyes are larger than in pratensis and nidicola, and cover half the width of the head, as in communis. The cephalothorax is light gray in the middle and dark at the sides and around the front of the head. The legs are gray, lighter toward the body and darker toward the ends, marked with indistinct rings, two or three to each joint. The abdomen is gray, with broken darker gray markings forming indistinctly a row of transverse marks in the middle. The sides are darkest toward the front end, where there are two black spots. The under side is lighter than the back. The epigynum [(fig. 180)] differs from that of the related species, having the middle lobe narrow in front and wide and triangular at the end.

Lycosa communis.—This is a common spider in pastures, running in grass or hiding under stones. It varies in color from light gray to almost black, but the markings are almost always the same and distinct. On the thorax there is a middle stripe extending forward to the eyes, and a narrower one between the eyes to the front of the head [(fig. 181)]. At the sides are light stripes nearly as wide as the middle one extending under the eyes to the front of the head. On the abdomen the front pointed stripe is large. The light stripes at the side of it are wide and distinct, uniting on the hinder half of the abdomen into a middle stripe, broken sometimes into a row of four or five spots. In dark individuals this light marking is yellow and more strongly defined than in lighter ones. On the thorax, especially in light colored-spiders, there are usually two or three light marks radiating from the dorsal groove. The legs, except the ends of the first and second, are marked with rings at the ends and middle of the joints, indistinct in light spiders and brighter in dark ones.

The length is two-fifths to half an inch. The legs are long, the fourth pair three-quarters of an inch in length. The second row of eyes is a little wider than the first, and the second eyes are large and their diameter apart [(fig. 182)]. On the under side of the abdomen are two dark stripes meeting at the spinnerets so as to form a horseshoe-shaped figure, but in some very dark individuals the whole under side of the abdomen behind the epigynum is dark colored. There is little difference between the sexes. The females carry eggs in June and July.