CHAP, XIV ARANEAE—MOULTS 339 
The first moult takes place while the newly-hatched spider is 
still with the rest of the brood either in or close to the “ cocoon ” 
or ego-bag. M‘Cook? thus describes the conclusion of the opera- 
tion in the case of Agelena naevia :-— 
“While it held on to the flossy nest with the two front and 
third pairs of legs, the hind pair was drawn up and forward, and 
the feet grasped the upper margin of the sac-like shell, which, 
when first seen, was about half-way removed from the abdomen. 
The feet pushed downwards, and at the same time the abdomen 
appeared to be pulled upward until the white pouch was gradually 
worked off.” 
The later moults are generally accomplished by the spider 
collecting all its legs together and attaching them with silk to 
the web above, while the body, also attached, hangs below. The 
old skin then splits along the sides of the body, and the animal, 
by a series of violent efforts, wriggles itself free, leaving a com- 
plete cast of itself, imcluding the legs, suspended above it. Fora 
day or two before the operation the spider eats nothing, and im- 
mediately upon its completion it hangs in a hmp and helpless 
condition for a quarter of an hour or so, until the new integu- 
ment has had time to harden. It is not unlikely that the reader 
has mistaken these casts for the shrivelled forms of unlucky 
spiders, and has had his sympathies aroused, or has experienced 
a grim satisfaction, in consequence—an expenditure of emotion 
which this account may enable him to economise in future. 
Limbs which the animal has accidentally lost are renewed at 
the time of moulting, though their substitutes are at first smaller 
than those they replace. On the other hand, the struggle to get 
rid of the old skin sometimes results in the loss of a limb, and the 
spider is doomed to remain short-handed until the next ecdysis. 
Until the last moult the generative apertures, which are 
situated under the anterior part of the abdomen, are completely 
sealed up. Their disclosure is accompanied, in the case of the 
male, by a remarkable development of the last joint of each 
pedipalp, which becomes swollen and often extremely compli- 
cated with bulbs, spines, and bristles. A mature male spider 
may at once be distinguished by the consequent knobbed appear- 
ance of its palps; and the particular form they assume is highly 
characteristic of the species to which the spider belongs. 
1 American Spiders and their Spinning Work, 1i., 1890, p. 208. 
