Ɛpsilon

To Albert Günther   3 March 1877

Down, | Beckenham, Kent. | Railway Station. | Orpington. S.E.R.

March 3. 77

My dear Dr Günther,

I think No 2 cannot be my number; if printed on white paper, it then may be mine & the entrance in my catalogue is “caught on board the Beagle”.

No 235 on tin label is a spider caught at Rio de Janeiro which I say is closely allied to Epira. The abdomen coloured brilliant red. The animal makes a very regular nearly horizontal web with concentric circles & rests in the centre on the inferior surface, where there is an irregular & thin tissue of network. But this tissue is sometimes placed in the centre above the concentric web.

No 1442. Spiders caught by sweeping at King Georges Sound Australia. I am sorry to say this is all the information I can give,1

Yours very sincerely | Ch. Darwin

LS

1
The letter from Günther has not been found, but he had asked CD about spider specimens collected on the Beagle voyage; see letters to Albert Günther, 28 January [1877] and 25 February [1877]. For CD’s specimen lists including these items, see R. D. Keynes ed. 2000, pp. 321, 38 and 328, and 367. Epira is a misspelling of Epeira, a synonym of Araneus, a genus of orbweaver spiders. In the nineteenth century, many spiders were classified in Epeira that are now in different genera and families. The spider ‘allied to Epira’ was later identified as Leucauge venusta, the orchard orbweaver. Adam White formally described it in 1841 as Linyphia (Leucauge) argyrobapta and included this description from CD’s notes: ‘Web very regular, nearly horizontal, with concentric circles; beneath, but sometimes above, the concentric web, there is an irregular or thin tissue of network; the animal rests in the centre, on the inferior surface: abdomen brilliant; the red colour like a ruby with a bright light behind’ (White 1841, p. 474).

Please cite as “DCP-LETT-10875,” in Ɛpsilon: The Charles Darwin Collection accessed on 5 June 2025, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/dcp-data/letters/DCP-LETT-10875