1903.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. 143 



female — having, as it were, a pleasure in the state of excitement itself ; 

 or that (2) he strives first to assure himself of the eagerness of the 

 female; or that (3) he strives first to stimulate the female to equal 

 eagerness. The first of these answers probably accounts for a certain 

 part of the delay before the act of coition, but not for all of it. The 

 second answer, I think, accounts for the remaining part of the delay, 

 while the third answer is hardly admissible, and for the following 

 reason : Deep-rooted in every spider is caution in approaching another 

 individual, particularly upon a foreign web (and in web-making 

 species the male always approaches the female upon her own web). 

 This is well marked in Epeirids; the male approaches and retreats 

 many times tentatively until he assures himself, by the female remain- 

 ing quiet, that she is not hostile to him. A decided attack by the 

 female, and I have found the male to generally cease his approaches. 

 His peculiar motions during his approach, be they courtship or not, 

 are referable to his excitement. The approach is then marked by a 

 combination of fear and of intense excitement, more or less restrained 

 by this habit of fear. Certain attitudes of the male, in the Attidce 

 particularly, as the Peckhams have demonstrated, are such as to 

 exhibit most clearly before the female sexual beauties or eccentrici- 

 ties of form or color. But the point which I wish to emphasize is, 

 that there is no evidence that the male is conscious of exciting the 

 female thereby; by such motions and attitudes she certainly recognizes 

 him as a male, and perhaps is herself stimulated to a state of sexual 

 desire, but the male does not carry out these performances in order to 

 stimulate her. 



In the Lycosids with a decided courtship, a part of the courtship 

 is a straightening out before him of his first pair of legs by the male, 

 and then a withdrawal of them. But this is only an exaggerated 

 performance of motions that he exhibits in other mental states ; these 

 legs are his main organs of touch as he walks, and also his main organs 

 of guard; they are used similarly by the female. Each sex, in answer 

 to an act of hostility, elevates these legs and directs them forward. 

 Here is an act of caution, and the male in courtship simply exaggerates 

 the expression of this act. Now in two of our American species, 

 Lycosa ocreata and Lycosa stonei, the tibise of this pair of legs are 

 thickly furred with black hairs, making them very conspicuous. 

 In Lycosa stonei the male in his courtship waves these legs so as to 

 show their furring to the female, but waves them in approximately 

 the same manner as do Lycosids which possess no such secondary 

 sexual ornaments. But the male of L. ocreata does not wave these 



