Epeira stellata.—A brown spider, a quarter to a third of an inch long and nearly as broad, with pointed humps around the abdomen. The cephalothorax is wide in front, and the lateral eyes are on the outer sharp corners. The legs are short and usually drawn up and partly concealed under the abdomen. The abdomen has a sharp point in front that extends over the cephalothorax as far as the base of the first legs, and a large point behind, with a smaller one under it. At the sides are five pairs of points, and over the first of these another pair a little higher on the back. The cephalothorax is brown, lighter in the middle and darker at the sides, and covered with short gray hairs. The abdomen is marked with lighter and darker spots of brown, the front part generally dark with a very light middle spot, and the hinder half showing traces of the usual middle stripe of Epeira. The legs have dark rings at the ends and middle of the joints. It lives among low bushes a foot or two from the ground all over the country. This spider, as well as several other species, often leaves a web unfinished with the inner spiral still covering a large part of it, as in [fig. 420].

Epeira verrucosa.—Common in the South and as far north as Long Island, N.Y. The body is about a quarter of an inch long. The abdomen is narrow behind but not pointed, and in front nearly as wide as long. The middle is nearly covered by a triangular light spot,—white, yellow, or pink in different spiders,—surrounded by a darker color of various shades of brown or gray. The cephalothorax is yellow or light gray, with sometimes some darker spots in the middle. The legs are colored like the thorax, with darker rings at the ends of the joints and in the middle of the first and second femora. The spines are slender and colored like the hairs. The abdomen has a prominent tubercle behind, at the end of the light spot, and under it in the middle line two others. At the sides near the posterior end are two pairs of tubercles, and sometimes two other pairs farther forward, and two at the corners of the light spot. The colors of the under side are as variable as those above,—sometimes light without distinct markings, and sometimes almost black at the sides, on the sternum, and around the spinnerets. The epigynum [(fig. 422)] has a slender pointed finger reaching halfway to the spinnerets.

The male [(fig. 423)] has the head narrower than the female, and the abdomen as small as the cephalothorax. The legs are longer and more slender, with the metatarsus of the second pair curved inward, and a long forked spine on the inside of the tibia of the same legs.