8o AMERICAN SPIDERS 



sight in their hunting or courting, a fact which may be partially 

 accounted for by their habits of deception and inactivity. When a 

 male discovers the female of his species, he immediately climbs 

 upon her back or seizes an appendage with his chelicerae. He is 

 much more agile, and can tickle and caress her body until he is able 

 to accomplish his purpose. In some of these spiders the males are 

 very much smaller, and usually more darkly marked than the 

 females. The latter often walk around with a tiny long-legged 

 male clinging to their backs, paying little attention to his activities. 

 Certain spiders have interpolated in the sequence of their court- 

 ship an habitual act that tends to set them apart from all others. 

 The male of the stocky little species of Xysticus spins a thin web 

 over the female, attaching tiny silken lines from her abdomen and 

 legs to the substratum. This web has been called the bridal veil, 

 and its spinning is one of the extraordinary prenuptial habits of 

 many crab spiders. 



The Long-Sighted Hunters. It is among the spiders of this 

 group that we find those notorious for their love dances (Text Fig. 

 2). Almost all are day hunters, a habit in keeping with their need 

 for light to display themselves properly during courtship. Some of 

 them are well-known vagrants, and have received such expressive 

 names as "wolf spider," "lynx spider," and "jumping spider" in rec- 

 ognition of their life of action. However, even in this group with 

 the best eyes, reliance is only partially placed on sight during court- 

 ship; and in most instances the event does not occur unless the male 

 actually touches the female, even though he may perceive her by 

 sight. 



The whole makeup of the prenuptial display posture, antics, 

 and epigamic ornaments is distinct for each species. While de- 

 veloping these features nature has had to keep many allied species 

 separate, and thus has evolved by selection many different kinds of 

 dances. The female has become conditioned to respond only to 

 those performed by her species, and rarely makes mistakes. The 

 actual mating is usually preceded by a certain amount of stimula- 

 tion by the legs of the male, and it is this final action that com- 

 pletely precludes the possibility of any related species being ac- 

 cepted. 



In most wolf spiders, the palpi and front legs are provided with 

 some kind of ornamentation that contrasts sharply with the rest of 

 the body. Where such epigamic characters are present, their 



