1903.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 141 



her jaws, but she does not remain holding it continuously until it 

 hatches, but I have found will hang the cocoon upon the web in order 

 to feed and to clean herself. McCook has given a broad general accomit 

 of the degrees of maternity among spiders, and I will go into the sub- 

 ject here no further than to state that in most families and species 

 there is no marked maternal solicitude for the cocoons and young. 

 The case of the Drassidce, when the female is generally found near her 

 cocoon, is not a case of maternal solicitude, but the mother remains 

 near the cocoon because she chanced to place it in her narrow domi- 

 cile; an exception is found in Drassus ncglectus, described in the pre- 

 ceding pages. 



Courtship. — It is difficult to define what has been called "courtship" 

 in animals ; a general definition would be : the performance, immediately 

 preceding the copulation, of peculiar motions by the male. But this 

 is hardly an adequate definition, for an eager male always acts differ- 

 ently in the presence of a mature female than he does at other times. 

 We should then have to say "a rhythmically repeated set of motions 

 on the part of the male, continued for some time before copulation." 



Using the idea of courtship in this sense, we find a courtship in two 

 families of araneids, each of whom construct no webs, namely, the 

 Attidce and the Lycosidce. The courtship of the Attidce has been de- 

 scribed for a considerable number of species by the Peckhams, and 

 these authors have studied it particularly with regard to the relative 

 value of the theories of Sexual Selection expressed by Darwin and 

 Wallace. They find the courtship of the Attids to consist sometimes 

 in dances, sometimes in remarkable posturings, sometimes in a waving 

 of the legs or palpi by the male; and they interpret these motions 

 as in each case an exhibition before the female of bright colors and 

 peculiar structures by the male. The Attidce are the most brilliantly 

 colored of all the spiders, and some of them evince courtship motions 

 to a degree not shown by any others. Menge and Treat have briefly 

 noted courtship motions among Lycosidce, and I have described them 

 in the earlier part of this paper for Pardosa nigropalpis, Lycosa stonei, 

 L. lepida and L. scutulata. Without repeating the details of the ob- 

 servations, it may be stated that the actions of the male consist 

 in a rhythmical motion of the first pair of legs (waving in the air or 

 tapping upon the ground), sometimes accompanied by waving of the 

 palpi. 



I have not found in my own studies, nor do I find in the observations 

 of others, indications of true courtship in any other araneid families. 

 To be sure, in web-makers like the Pholcidce, Theridiidce and Epeiridce, 



