248 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



toilet after their bathe ! The use of the palpi for cleaning 

 the falces and fangs after a meal was described in some detail 

 by the present writer in the Field of May 23, 19 14, but these 

 were a far more elaborate process. The following operations 

 were observed : 



1 . The second and third pairs of legs are dried where neces- 

 sary by pulling them slowly through the opening and shutting 

 maxillae, and finishing with a long stationary " suck." 



2. The palpi are dried in the same way. 



3. The first and fourth pairs of legs are cleaned a little as 

 in 1, but mainly by rubbing carefully with the second and 

 third pairs followed by a sucking of that limb. 



4. The ventral side was dried by rubbing the metatarsus 

 over it ; and this joint is then sucked. A very few applications 

 seemed to suffice. 



These separate actions do not take place in any orderly 

 manner. A little of one is followed by a little of another, and 

 often 2 and 3 are simultaneous. The spider dodges from 

 limb to limb and from side to side with no regard for sequence. 

 The whole operation may take as much as half an hour. 1 



The ecdysis of one of these spiders is readily witnessed 

 since, before moulting, the legs turn to a dull, almost black 

 tint. A male which I saw undergo its final moult in extracting 

 its legs from the old skins, heaved fourteen times a minute as 

 regularly as clock-work for half an hour and then, hastening, 

 pulled for ten minutes seventeen times to the minute. This 

 gives a total of nearly six hundred pulls to remove a leg about 

 thirty millimetres long. Smaller spiders can moult completely 

 in a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes. After ecdysis, the 

 legs, palpi, and falces are a quite pale green and do not turn 

 brown until some hours later. 



Some interesting and fairly original results have been 

 obtained concerning the fertilisation of the females by the 

 male and her willingness to accept his advances or to eat him. 



A male placed on the web of a female at once utters the 

 sexual call by drumming on the web with his palpi, in exactly 

 the same way as Warburton and Moggeridge have described 

 in the cases of the wolf and trap-door spiders. In many cases 

 this brings out a fierce paramour and leads the male to think 



1 My sister, V. Savory, has recently observed these same actions performed by 

 the garden spider, Epeira diademata. 



