Common spiders of the United States
There are few books on the American spiders, and these are either large and expensive works or else special papers published by scientific societies, and so little known to the public. Since publishing my papers on the New England and Canadian spiders in the Transactions of the Connecticut Academy from 1882 to 1894, I have had frequent calls for a smaller and simpler book to meet the wants of readers who, without making a special study of the subject, want to know a little about spiders in general and especially those species that they often meet with.
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It is hoped this book will answer the purpose and help to lessen the prejudice against spiders and lead to a more general acquaintance with them, like the popular knowledge of birds and butterflies. The characters used in the descriptions are, as far as possible, those that can be seen without microscopic examination and without much experience in the handling of small animals. The illustrations, which show the form and markings of every species, are from my own drawings and photographs, a large part of them made new for this book.
This book is designed to make the reader acquainted with the common spiders most likely to be found over a large part of the United States as far south as Georgia and as far west as the Rocky Mountains. Local collections show that in the neighbourhood of any city in the country there are at least three or four hundred species of spiders, but few such collections have been made, and it is not yet possible to tell all the kinds of spiders that live in any particular place, or how far any species extends over the country.
The species which are here described and figured are all well known and have been described in other books. Rare and doubtful species are omitted, though some of these may in time prove to be among the most common. A large number of spiders are too small to be easily seen, and most of these are omitted, only a few representative species being described. Spiders have, unfortunately, no common names, except such indefinite ones as " the garden spider," "the black spider," "the jumping spider," and the like. Even "tarantula" has become only a nickname for any large spider
The names of spiders, like those of other animals, have been given to them independently by different persons so that many of them have more than one name, and the more common the spider, the larger the number of names. In this book, only one name is usually given to each species, and the name used is one that has been published with a description of the species in some other well-known book. Readers who are interested in the names of species and in comparing the classifications of different naturalists are referred to.
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