No. 1.] SEXUAL SELECTION IN SPIDERS. 11 



ing each other than were the males. In Icius mitratus neither 

 sex was especially pugnacious, but the male was as little so as 

 the female. In Synageles pkata the females never came near 

 each other without some display of hostility, though they did 

 not actually fight. 



In several species of Xijsiicus — as Jerox and gulosus — the 

 females are savage and ready to attack anything that comes 

 in their way, while the males are smaller and more peaceable. 

 De Geer tells of a male spider that, " in the midst of his prepar- 

 atory caresses was seized by the object of his attentions, envel- 

 oped by her in a web, and then devoured, a sight which, as he 

 adds, filled him with horror and indignation." ^ The Rev. 0. 

 P. Cambridge holds that the greater ferocity on the part of the 

 female in the genus Nephila has led, through the action of 

 natural selection, to the extreme reduction in the size of the 

 males.^ In each of two species of Lycosa, whose mating 

 habits we were endeavoring to discover, two males were 

 destroyed by a single female. 



Not all female spiders are savage and quarrelsome. In 

 some genera, as Linyphia, the two sexes live happily together 

 in the same web ; but Hentz, after twenty years' study of North 

 American spiders, says that "there is less ferocity in the spi- 

 ders of this division than in any other of the family. It is the 

 only sub-genus in which the male and female may be seen har- 

 moniously dwelling together.'" Although subsequent investi- 

 gation has made it necessary to qualify this statement, the 



IKirby and Stance, Entomology, Vol. I, p. 280, 1818. 



2 Proc. Zoot Soc. 1871, p. 621. Simon has the following interesting remarks on 

 sexual differences in size InEpeiridae: "Dans les genres oil I'inegalite est faible, le 

 nomhre des males parait egal a celui des f eraelles, car fi, I'epoque de I'amour ces Ppeir- 

 idcB se rencontrent regulierement par paires ; mais, daus les genres oil 11 y a grande 

 disproportion, le nombre des males est beaucoup plus considerable, car 11 n'est pas 

 rare de voir quatre on cinq individns de ce sexe courtiser una seiile I'emelle. Ces petits 

 males sout adultes les premiers, niais la duree deleur vie parait tres-courte, car apres 

 Tepoque de la reproduction lis disparaissent completement ; lis ne construisent point 

 de toile propre ; mais lis se tiennent h proximite des endroits habites par la lemelle, 

 attendant le moment propice pour I'accoui^lement, qui a lien au milieu de la toile de 

 celle-ci est qui est tonjours precede de longues hesitations. Les Arachnides de France, 

 I, p. 20. 



3 Spiders of the United States, p. 132. 



