98 The Structure and Habits of Spiders. 



begins over again. In these encounters the 

 males are often injured ; they frequently lose 

 some of their legs : and I have seen one, that 

 had only four out of his eight left, still standing 

 up to his work. 



At length the male succeeds in getting under 

 the female's abdomen, and inserting his palpi 

 into the epigynum. Fig. 55 shows the female 

 hanging in the web, with the male at , with 

 his legs grasped around her abdomen. 



The habits of these spiders furnish the 

 grounds for the popular story, that female spi- 

 ders regularly eat the males. No doubt it 

 occasionally happens, where the female is the 

 larger of the two ; but in many species they 

 live together for some time in the same web, 

 or in a nest spun for the purpose ; in some 

 cases, before the female has reached the adult 

 state. 



LAYING EGGS. 



When the eggs are mature, the female pro- 

 ceeds, like the male, to make a little web, and 

 lays the eggs on it. Then she covers them 

 over with silk, forming a cocoon, in which the 



