16 AMERICAN SPIDERS AND THEIR SPINNINGWORK. 



What trace has the female left of her identity? By what subtle influence 

 does she attract her wooer to settle in her vicinity ? By what strange 

 responsive power does he know the signs, and discern that his mate and 

 the mating hour are nigh ? There is no fact in the life of spiders that 

 has struck me with greater force as an unsolved mystery of Nature than 

 this. I have no suggestions to offer in answer of the queries raised, but 

 proceed to give such facts about the jjairing of spiders as have passed 

 imder my observation, and been gathered from the records of others. 



To arachnologists such studies are of special value. In the systematic 

 grouping of spiders, among tlie characters to which later students give 

 greatest force are the distinctive organs of the male and female. The 

 cliaracters of the palj? on the one, and the epigynum on the other, dom- 

 inate the decisions by which species are determined. It is certainly reason- 

 able to infer that if the external forms of these organs are of such con- 

 trolling value in determining species, the use of the organs, or, in other 

 words, the manner of pairing, might be expected to show characteristic 

 diiferences. In point of fact we so find it ; and the reader will be able to 

 determine how closely the one may correspond with the other. I venture 

 to add the suggestion that habits which stand at the very gates of life 

 must have especial value in the natural history of such creatures as we 

 are studying, and no artificial delicacy should turn aside the student. 



It seems probable that fewer male spiders than females are hatched 

 from the eggs; or, that fewer reach the adult state. At least, one finds 

 not only in collections, but in field observations, that females 

 Males commonly greatly outnumber males. It would follow that one 

 .. , male spider i^robably serves as gallant for several females, a 



Fewer. species of polygamy which reminds us of the barnyard chanti- 

 cleer. This fact, as has been said,i would indicate that the peril 

 which an aranead husband is commonly supposed to undergo during 

 courtship has been considerably exaggerated by writers. According to 

 De Geer, in his observation upon Linyphia montana, a single male suffices 

 for many females, to whom he pays his respects consecutively in the same 

 hour.^ Mr. Campbell saw one male in union with three females of Tege- 

 naria guyonii during twenty days in August.-^ Professor Peckham records 

 similar facts among the Saltigrades. Thorell speaks of the male as "the 

 rarer sex,"* and Darwin was informed by Blackwall that males are more 

 numerous than females with a few species, but that the reverse appears to 

 be the case out of several species in six genera. On the other hand, Mr. 

 Campbell captured ten spiderlings of Teg?naria and found that seven of 

 them showed the swollen palps of the immature male.* 



1 Emile Blanchard, quoted from Revue des Deux Mondes in " Popular Science," Octo- 

 ber, 1888. 2 Vide Walck., Apteres, Vol. II., page 411, suppl. 



^ Linu. Soc. Jour. Zool., Vol. XVII., " Pau-ing of Tegenaria guyonii," page 1U7. 

 * "On European Spiders," page 205. *" Pairing of Teg. guyonii," page 1(58. 



