The lower part of the sides and the underside of the abdomen are of a uniform pale dull brownish-yellow; the spinners of the superior pair are short, strong, and 2-jointed; those of the inferior pair are very minute, and near together at the base of, and almost between, the others.
Adult and immature females were found in 1873-4 abundantly at Montpellier in France, in unbranched tubular nests closed at the surface with a close-fitting "cork" lid.
In _Harvesting Ants and Trap-door Spiders_, p. 92, a spider inhabiting similar nests, and found commonly at _Cannes_ and Mentone was described as _N. cæmentaria_, Latr. The subsequent discovery however of a very closely allied, but certainly distinct, species in abundance at Montpellier (the locality in which the original _N. cæmentaria_, Latr., was found) makes it more than probable that the _Montpellier_, and not the Mentone, species is the true _N. cæmentaria_. Certainly as yet no other species more likely than this to be the one described by Latreille has been found at Montpellier; in fact, the one here described is the common one found there, and alone answers to Latreille's character of having a nest with a lid of the cork type.
It has become therefore necessary now to record the Mentone species under another name, and under that name, "_N. Moggridgii_" (p. 273) will be noted the specific differences by which the two species may be at once distinguished from each other.
The male of the spider here described has not been yet found. A description is given (p. 276) of a male spider, _Nemesia incerta_ (no doubt closely allied), found by M. Eugène Simon at Digne; but reasons will be given why it is not probable that this Digne spider should be, as conjectured by M. Simon, the male of the Montpellier species. Whether the _N. carminans_ (Latr.) is the male of _N. cæmentaria_ (Latr.) or not, is another question, and one surrounded with some obscurity and difficulty. Latreille described _N. cæmentaria_ (female) from Montpellier, and _N. carminans_ (male) from Aix in Provence; the latter being specially characterized by a bifid point to the prolongation of the palpal bulb; L. Dufour appears subsequently to have considered _N. carminans_, Latr. (male) to be the male of _N. cæmentaria_, and Latreille appears to have agreed with L. Dufour upon this, _vide_ Walck. _Ins. Apt._, i. p. 236; but Dufour afterwards (_Ann. Gen. Sc. Phys._, tom. v. Bruxelles, 1820, p. 103) introduced an element of confusion into the question by describing _N. carminans_ as having the point of the palpal organs simple, "nullement bifid," and throwing out a suggestion that it might be the male of _N. Sauvagii_, Latr., (= _N. pionnière_ or _fodiens_, Walck.) Latreille upon this (_Vues générales sur les Aranéides, Acad. Roy. des Sc._, 1830, pp. 64, 65) explains Dufour's suggestion as an inadvertence, but takes no notice of the difference of the form of the palpal organs as described by him; at the same time however Latreille explains why, probably, Walckenaer "still considers (in his _Faune française_) _N. carminans_ to be a distinct species." We may conclude from this that Latreille never altered _his_ opinion that his own _N. cæmentaria_ and _N. carminans_ were the two sexes of the same species; and we shall probably rightly agree with Walckenaer that Dufour had another species before him, which he wrongly (l.c.) described as _N. carminans_.