The abdomen is of an oblong-oval form, truncate before, and tolerably convex above; it is of a pale dull yellowish colour clothed with yellow-grey hairs, among which are a good many prominent dark bristly ones; the fore part of the upper side is irregularly marked with black-brown; following this towards the hinder part, and reaching half way or more to the spinners, is an indistinct longitudinal central line of the same colour, throwing off numerous short lateral lines at right angles; towards either side of the hinder two-thirds of the abdomen are several oblique black-brown lines extending more or less over the sides; one, about the middle, extends farther over the sides than the rest, and almost unites with a curved deep black-brown transverse line crossing the under side of the abdomen a little way in front of the spinners.
The under side of the abdomen is similar in colour to the upper side, and, besides the transverse dark line above mentioned, there is another touching the anterior margins of the posterior spiracular plates; the superior pair of spinners are short and strong; the inferior pair small, and in the ordinary position, but apparently not (proportionally) so small as in the females of some other species.
A single adult male was received for examination from M. Eugène Simon, by whom it was found at Digne (Basses Alpes, France). M. Simon conjectures that it may be the male of Nemesia Moggridgii (p. 273), but some slight differences in the size and positions of the eyes, and in the pattern on the cephalothorax, and on the under, as well as the upper, side of the abdomen, lead me to believe that it is of a different, and hitherto undescribed species, though probably very closely allied to some others, especially to Nemesia Manderstjernæ (N. meridionalis, Cambr., described, p. 283); in the present species however the hind-lateral eyes are much larger in proportion than in N. Manderstjernæ.
Habitat. Digne, Basses Alpes, France.
Nemesia dubia, sp. n., [Plate XIX], fig. E, p. 229.
Syn. Nemesia cæmentaria, Simon, Aranéides nouv. ou peu connus du Midi de l'Europe, Mém. Liège, 1873 (separate copy), p. 24.
Adult male, length 51/2 lines to 6 lines.
M. Eugène Simon (l.c.) describes, as N. cæmentaria, Latr., both sexes of a spider found by himself in the Pyrenees and Spanish mountain regions.
Languedoc and Provence are also given as localities, but it is not clear that he has himself found it in these latter parts, certainly not the male.
Two examples of this sex, found in the Pyrenees, and received from M. Simon, are now before me; these correspond, so far, very exactly to the description he gives (l.c.); the female I have not seen.