380 ARACHNIDA ARANEAE CHAP. 



scale, while such as eventually develop male organs will often 

 thereafter be content with a few straggling lines made with very 

 slight regard to symmetry. They become nomadic in their 

 habits, wandering off in search of the females, and pitching a 

 hasty tent by the way. 



The relations between the sexes in the Spider tribe present 

 points of extreme interest, but in this connexion the various 

 groups must be separately treated on account of their very 

 different habits of life. 



In no group are these relations more curious than in the 

 Epeiridae, the constructors of the familiar wheel-like web. Love- 

 making is no trifling matter here. If the female is not in the 

 mood for the advances of the male she will probably regard him 

 as a desirable addition to her larder. Even if his wooing is 

 accepted, he has to beat a precipitate retreat after effecting his 

 purpose, or he may fall a victim to his partner's hunger. 



This strange peril braved by the male in courting the female, 

 which has, as far as is known, no parallel in any other depart- 

 ment of the animal kingdom, is frequently mentioned as universal 

 among spiders. It unquestionably exists, and may be verified by 

 any patient observer in the case of the large Garden-spider Epeira 

 diadematct, but it has only been observed among certain species 

 of the Epeiridae and Attidae. It will be remembered that in 

 the Epeiridae the males are sometimes absurdly small in com- 

 parison with the females, and this diminution of size is thought 

 to have a direct connection with the danger undergone at the 

 mating season. Small active males stand a better chance of 

 escape from ferocious females, so that natural selection has acted 

 in the direction of reducing their size as far as is compatible 

 with the performance of their functions. 



Pickard-Cambridge l cites an extreme case. He says : " The 

 female of Nephila clirysogaster, Walck. (an almost universally 

 distributed tropical Epeirid), measures 2 inches in the length 

 of its body, while that of the male scarcely exceeds Yo~th of an 

 inch, and is less than y^^th part of her weight." 



During the mating season the males may be looked for on 

 the borders of the snares of the females. Their action is hesitat- 

 ing and irresolute, as it well may be, and for hours they will 

 linger on the confines of the web, feeling it cautiously with their 



1 Spiders of Dorset, 1879-1881, p. xxvii. 



