1903.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 59 



STUDIES ON THE HABITS OF SPIDERS, PAETICULARLY THOSE OF THE 

 MATING PERIOD. 



BY THOMAS H. MONTGOMERY, JR./ PH.D. 



It is remarkable how little the habits of spiders have been pursued, 

 in consideration of the fact of their many peculiarities. Their webs 

 and the making of them have received the most attention, and next 

 to that their architecture of nests and burrows. A great literature 

 has grown up about the subject of the "threads of the Virgin," as to 

 the use of spiders in medicine, and as to their supposed venomous 

 bites. On the subject of generation, where the spiders are especially 

 removed from other animals, for the most part only scattered and 

 brief observations are to be found, and these mainly among the older 

 observers. Menge, who saw and described more of the mating habits 

 than any other naturalist before or since, took the pains to watch each 

 of his specimens alive in a bottle before killing it, and this was the 

 simple secret of his success. Most of the other recorded facts of 

 mating, except the notable ones of de Lignac, Bertkau and the Peck- 

 hams, were gleaned from chance observation in the field, which 

 must be necessarily less full and precise. Let the arachnologist watch 

 his spiders in the life before he kills them to describe their carcasses, 

 and the facts of structure will have a richer and more inspiring in- 

 fluence, -^i-^^i. 



And of further interest is the consideration that spiders were first 

 classified according to a certain set of habits, namely, the architecture 

 of their webs, and some of the groups thus early defined are still rec- 

 tified by morphological characters. In them is to be found a good 

 opportunity for examining the conservatism of habit, and for testing 

 how much reliance in taxonomy may be placed upon similarities of 

 habit — similarities that may persist through great changes of structure. 



The present study concerns mainly the processes of courtship and 

 copulation, the remarkable filling of the palpi with sperm (for which 

 the term "sperm-induction" is here introduced), the process of cocoon- 

 making, and the maternal care for the young. Other observations 

 have also been included on moult, and in some cases on feeding habits. 



^ Contribution from the Zoological Laboratory of the University of Pennsyl- 

 vania. 



