118 EIGHT-LEGGED FRIENDS. 



distinctly open to the severest animadversion. The 

 males of the garden spider, as in many other instances, 

 are decidedly smaller than their big round mates ; so 

 much so is this the case, indeed, in certain species that 

 they seem almost like parasites of the immensely larger 

 sack-bodied females. Now, just as the worker bees kill 

 off the drones as soon as the queen-bee has been duly 

 fertilized, regarding them as of no further importance or 

 value to the hive, so do the lady-spiders not only kill but 

 eat their husbands as soon as they find they have no 

 further use for them. Nay, if a female spider doesn't 

 care for the looks of a suitor who is pressing himself too 

 much upon her fond attention, her way of expressing her 

 disapprobation of his appearance and manners is to make 

 a murderous spring at him, and, if possible, devour him. 

 Under these painful circumstances the process of court- 

 ship is necessarily to some extent a difficult and delicate 

 one, fraught with no small danger to the adventurous 

 swain who has the boldness to commend himself by 

 personal approach to these very fickle and irascible fair 

 ones. It was most curious and exciting, accordingly, to 

 watch the details of the strange courtship, which we 

 could only observe in the case of the cruel Eliza, the 

 rather gentler Lucy having been already mated, ap- 

 parently, before she took up her quarters in our climbing 

 white rose-bush. One day, however, a timid-looking 

 male spider, with inquiry and doubt in every movement 

 of his tarsi, strolled tentatively up on the neat round web 

 where Eliza was hanging, head downward as usual, all 

 her feet on the thread, on the look-out for house-flies. 

 We knew he was a male at once by his longer and 



