The falces are of a deep blackish red-brown colour, longitudinally striped with yellow-greyish hairs mixed with dark bristles; and there are some strong spines at the fore extremity on the inner side.
The abdomen is oval, tolerably convex above, of a dull, pale, straw colour, suffused with brown at its fore extremity, whence an indistinct central longitudinal band tapers to a point rather more than half way to the spinners; on either side of this band are some oblique, lateral, brown lines, which become broken chevrons, between the termination of the central band and the spinners. The sides are obscurely and irregularly marked with brown, and the under side is of a uniform dull straw-yellow; the abdomen is clothed thickly with mixed yellow-grey and dark hairs; the upper side is furnished also with strong, nearly erect bristly black ones.
Each tarsus terminates with three claws; those of the superior pair are pectinated beneath, but the number of teeth appears to vary in the different legs, from six to eight. The tibial joint of the first pair is of the same character as that in the males of other species: it has a strong black curved spine directed inwards from the fore extremity of the under side, and a short bluntish-conical, but very distinct prominence at the same extremity on the inner side, not far from the base of the curved spine, [Plate XX], fig. B 4 and C; the colour of the legs is yellow, tinged with orange, the upper sides of the femora being nearly black; the palpi are similar in colour, the upper side of the humeral joints being suffused with a blackish hue.
The relative length of the legs is not constant; in one example it was 4, 3, 1, 2, in the other 4, 1, 2, 3, 2 and 3 being very nearly equal. Similar variations are also found in the legs of the female.
In regard to the nest of this species, researches made subsequently to the publication of Harvesting Ants and Trap-door Spiders have proved it to be of rather a different form from that there represented; thus in the main tube, just before the inner door is reached, there is a descending branch running off from the main tube at the same angle as the ascending branch, but in an opposite direction; in the older and larger nests the descending branch becomes choked with débris; it is more distinct in the nests of the younger spiders, and is always more or less distinctly traceable.
N.B.—In the above details there have been only one or two special distinctions observed between the two male examples examined. It should however be noted that in one (the one captured behind a stone wall) the ocular area was slightly narrower in proportion to its length, and the interval between the eyes of each lateral pair rather less.
Habitat. San Remo, Bordighera, Mentone, Cannes, and Hyères.
Nemesia Meridionalis, [Plate XVII], fig. B, p. 215.
Syn. Nemesia meridionalis, Costa, Fauna d. Regn. Napl. Arachn., p. 14, Pl. I, figs. 2, 3.
---- —— Simon, Aranéides nouv. ou peu connus du Midi de l' Europe, Mém. Liège, 1873 (separate copy), p. 21.