The falces are strong and massive, more so than in Ct. Sauvagii, but of normal form. They are furnished with hairs and bristles, and with strong spines near their inner extremities on the upper side; the fangs are strong, folded along the under side of the falces in a furrow which is toothed along either edge. The colour of the falces is a rich deep red-brown.
The maxillæ are strong, straight, divergent, with a prominent point at the inner extremity, and some very short, strong, tooth-like spines at their base; their colour is dull yellow-brown, and, with the labium and sternum, they are thickly clothed with short strong hairs.
The labium is dark yellow-brown, tipped slightly with black; it is of a somewhat semilunar form, and has a few very short tooth-like spines near its apex.
The sternum is of a rough oval form, broadest behind and shorter and broader in proportion than that of Ct. Sauvagii and Ct. Moggridgii; its colour is dull yellow-brown, and it is destitute of the two shining bare patches conspicuous in both those species.
The abdomen is large, short-oval, broadest behind and very convex above; it is of a dull yellowish-brown colour, thickly mottled with minute dark points seen through a lens to be little rings, from the centre of each of which springs a bristly hair; the underside is paler; the spinners and spiracular openings are normal. As observed above, the colour of the abdomen was rather different in life; it was then of a deep blackish chocolate brown, with an indistinct longitudinal line along the middle of its fore part on the upper side, intersected by a similar line at right angles; but these lines soon disappeared after death; the specimen had been in spirit of wine some months before the present description was made.
A single example, with its tubular nest of the cork-lid type, was received alive from California in 1873, and appears to have been hitherto undescribed; though no larger than Ct. Sauvagii, it is yet a stouter and more massive spider, and may readily be distinguished by the large size of its fore-lateral eyes, the narrower ocular area arising from the far greater proximity to each other of the eyes of each lateral pair, the less convexity of the caput, and the greater convexity of the thorax, as well as by its being altogether a darker coloured spider, and having shorter stouter legs.
Habitat. Visalia, 350 miles south of San Francisco, California.
Gen. Nemesia, Savigny.
Nemesia Cæmentaria, [Plate XIX], fig. B, p. 229.
Mygale cæmentaria (Latr.) Hist. Nat. des Crust. t. vii. p. 164.