126 SEX 



quivering ; but he seems as if he were afraid 

 of coming too near his mistress." 



Some male spiders fight with apparent 

 seriousness at the breeding season, but the 

 meaning of the fighting is doubtful. The 

 Peckhams, who watched " hundreds of seem- 

 ingly terrible battles " between the males in 

 twelve different species, came to the con- 

 clusion that " they are all sham affairs gotten 

 up for the purpose of displaying before the 

 females, who commonly stand by, interested 

 spectators." And though a phrase like 

 " sham fight " be somewhat too anthropo- 

 morphic, there is certainly a puzzle, for the 

 males in their duels seem to take very good 

 care not to hurt one another. " It seemed 

 cruel sport at first to put eight or ten male 

 spiders into a box to see them fight, but it 

 was soon apparent that they were very 

 prudent little fellows." . . . "In fact, after 

 two weeks of hard fighting we were unable to 

 discover one wounded warrior." 



It is difficult to deal briefly with the 

 problem of the significance of the combats. 

 In a few cases, as in sea-lions, they may be 

 regarded as literal and serious combats for 

 the possession of females of a larger harem 

 in fact. In many cases, such as some ante- 

 lopes, they have the effect of driving oft 

 candidates who are too weak or too young 

 to hold their own. Some of these are left 

 unmated till the next season, and some are 

 even killed. Thus there will be worked out 

 a discriminate elimination of the relatively 

 less fit males, and here sex may be said to 

 operate as a factor in evolution. 



