American Spiders and Their Spinningwork, Vol. 3: A Natural History of the Orbweaving Spiders of the United States, With Special Regard to Their Industry and Habits (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from American Spiders and Their Spinningwork, Vol. 3: A Natural History of the Orbweaving Spiders of the United States, With Special Regard to Their Industry and Habits

I count it a duty as well as a pleasure to place among the number of those entitled to my public thanks the name of Miss Elizabeth F. Bonsall, who has made the original drawings for nearly all the plates contained in the atlas. Her faithful and successful work has not always been correctly reproduced by lithographers and colorists, but for the most part it speaks for itself in the admirable rendering from life of the species which she has figured.

As the frontispiece of this volume I have printed a portrait of Professor Nicholas Marcellus Hentz, M. D., who may justly be regarded as the father of American Araneology. John Abbot was indeed before him in the field, and during the early part of this century made per sonal studies in South Carolina and Georgia of our American spider fauna. The results Of these studies, remain in the descriptions of Walckenaer and in the beautiful manuscript drawings now preserved in the Library of the British Museum of Natural History in Kensington, London, and to which fuller reference is made in the pages which follow. Some interesting notes upon the life of Professor Hentz, written by the late Mr. Edward Burgess, may be found in the preface to' The Spiders of the United States, published by the Boston Society of Natural History. I am indebted to Professor Henshaw, the Secretary of that Society, for a photograph of the likeness, from which the phototype plate of Professor Hentz has been made. It has been reproduced as faithfully as the age and condition of the original photograph would allow.

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