380 ARACHNIDA—ARANEAE CHAP. 
scale, while such as eventually develop male organs will often 
thereafter be content with a few straggling lines made with very 
sight regard to symmetry. They become nomadic in their 
habits, wandering off in search of the females, and pitching a 
hasty tent by the way. 
The relations between the sexes in the Spider tribe present 
points of extreme interest, but in this connexion the various 
groups must be separately treated on account of their very 
different habits of life. 
In no group are these relations more curious than in the 
Epeiridae, the constructors of the familiar wheel-like web. Love- 
making is no trifling matter here. If the female is not in the 
mood for the advances of the male she will probably regard him 
as a desirable addition to her larder. Even if his wooing is 
accepted, he has to beat a precipitate retreat after effecting his 
purpose, or he may fall a victim to his partner’s hunger. 
This strange peril braved by the male in courting the female, 
which has, as far as is known, no parallel in any other depart- 
ment of the animal kingdom, is frequently mentioned as universal 
among spiders. It unquestionably exists, and may be verified by 
any patient observer in the case of the large Garden-spider Lpeira 
diademata, but it has only been observed among certain species 
of the Epeiridae and Attidae. It will be remembered that in 
the Epeiridae the males are sometimes absurdly small in com- 
parison with the females, and this diminution of size is thought 
to have a direct connection with the danger undergone at the 
mating season. Small active males stand a better chance of 
escape from ferocious females, so that natural selection has acted 
in the direction of reducing their size as far as is compatible 
with the performance of their functions. 
Pickard-Cambridge* cites an extreme case. He says: “The 
female of Nephila chrysogaster, Walck. (an almost universally 
distributed tropical Epeirid), measures 2 inches in the length 
of its body, while that of the male scarcely exceeds ;/)th of an 
inch, and is less than +3/,5th part of her weight.” 
During the mating season the males may be looked for on. 
the borders of the snares of the females. Their action is hesitat- 
ing and irresolute, as it well may be, and for hours they will 
linger on the confines of the web, feeling it cautiously with their 
1 Spiders of Dorset, 1879-1881, p. xxvii. 
