$Dictyna volucripes and muraria.$--These two gray spiders are the common Dictynas on walls and fences and on the ends of grass and weeds, where they make webs shaped according to the places where they live, having in some part of the web a hole in which the spider usually hides (fig. 473). Some allied species make nearly circular webs on walls, with the hole near the center, and gather so much dust as to appear like a spot of dirt (fig. 471). _Volucripes_ is about a sixth of an inch in length, and _muraria_ an eighth of an inch. _Volucripes_ is browner in color and more common on plants, and _muraria_ is grayer and more common on fences. Both species are marked much alike. The cephalothorax is dark brown, partly covered with light gray hairs, some of which form roughly three stripes on the head. The abdomen is large and round, in some females nearly as wide as long. The front half has a middle dark spot of various shapes, and the hinder half two rows of spots connected in pairs with a middle line, forming a figure much like the markings of several species of Epeira (figs. 484, 487). The legs are dark gray or brown, covered with fine hairs, the first pair not much longer than the body. In the females the mandibles are a little thickened in the middle. In the male they are elongated and turned forward at the ends and curved apart in the middle, and have a small tooth on the front near the base. The palpi of the males (figs. 485, 486) are short, with the patella as wide as it is long and wider than the femur and tibia. The tarsus is half longer than wide and pointed at the end. In the tibia there is a little difference between the species that can be seen by looking at the palpi from the side; in _volucripes_ there is a stout process at the base as long as the tibia itself and pointing upward at a right angle with it (fig. 485); in _muraria_ the corresponding process is short and turned forward, and the tibia seems proportionally longer (fig. 486). The cribellum in both these species is large and can easily be seen in front of the other spinnerets. The calamistrum extends over half the length of the fourth metatarsus, which in _volucripes_ is slightly curved. [Illustration: FIG. 488. Web of Amaurobius sylvestris on a rough conglomerate rock. The spider had a nest in a crack at one side.] [Illustration: FIGS. 489, 490. Amaurobius sylvestris.--489, female enlarged four times. 490, male palpus without the terminal joint to show the processes of the tibia.]