104 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [Jan., 



half an hour, the spider slowly falHng out of its old skin, and the legs 

 were quite colorless immediately after the moult. 



Mating. — The method of observation was to keep a female in a cage 

 until she had made a web there, then to drop a o^, handling him as 

 gently as possible, upon her web. 



The introductory steps of the mating are as often made by the female 

 as by the male, and she often shows quite an insatiable eagerness, even 

 sometimes leaving food to approach the male. As soon as the male 

 commences to move upon her web she recognizes him as a male of her 

 own species, and, when she is eager, commences immediately to signal 

 to him, both spiders being on the lower surface of the web and upside 

 down (the usual position). The female hangs to the web with the 

 third and fourth pairs of legs, and shakes the longer second and first 

 pairs vigorously and spasmodically in the air (when those legs are not 

 attached to web lines), otherwise with them she shakes web lines to 

 which they are hooked. This "signalling" is a sign of eagerness on 

 the part of the female, and so far as I have observed she makes it at 

 no other time than when she is eager and notices the approach of a 

 male of her own species. There are individual differences in the mode 

 of signalling, as well as differences in accord with the degree of eager- 

 ness of the female ; sometimes a female signals without moving from 

 her original position, sometimes with the signalling she moves by short 

 steps toward the male. When she is not eager she either remains 

 motionless, or else rushes hostilely toward the male as at an object of 

 prey; in both cases the male makes no advances, and when she is 

 markedly aggressive he escapes by dropping from the web. The 

 whole attitude of the male is that of combined timidity and eagerness ; 

 he is much smaller than the female and upon a foreign web, and usually 

 acts with great caution. Very freciuently he will climb about the web 

 for a greater or longer period, the female all the while signaling, before 

 he approaches her; often he approaches and touches her several times 

 and each time rapidly withdraws again ; more rarely, the male responds 

 quickly to the signalling of the female and copulates within a minute 

 of time. Sometimes the male, while moving about on the web, on 

 coming across a break in it, will pause to mend the break before ap- 

 proaching the female. The male shows his eagerness by a spasmodic 

 jerking of his abdomen. He tests the eagerness of the female, and 

 finds her position on the web, by grasping with the claws of his first 

 pair of feet the web lines that she is shaking by her signalling, and by 

 drawing these web lines taut he feels her movements all the more dis- 

 tinctly; he approaches gradually nearer her, guided by her signalling, 

 and finally makes a short rush toward her. 



