RESEARCHES UPON SPIDERS. 7l' 



tiful and well adapted to manufactures. It remains now for 

 me to speak of their propagation, and while the statements 

 I shall make will interest the naturalist, they will confirm 

 my preceding assertions. 



I^ART SECOND. 



GENERATION OF SPIDERS. 



I have already observed that Reaumur, in his calculation 

 supposes as many of the individual spiders to be masculine 

 as feminine. Is this true ? So Aristotle and Pliny wrote, 

 not admitting in their polygamy but one sort of conjugal so- 

 ciety.^' President Le Bon, who was one of the first to ex- 

 amine them in this respect, inclines to think them androgy- 

 nous and hermaphroditic, and it would be said, that Reau- 

 mur himself had some suspicion of that. It is certain that 

 it may be perceived from his writings, that he has not well 

 described the sexual parts, and he is, notwithstanding, sure 

 of the manner of their copulation. 



Naturalists, following in the footsteps of Aristotle 

 and Pliny, always speak of the ferocity of spiders, owing to 

 which they devour, not only their companions and brothers, 

 but even their parents, and there are few who refrain from 

 eating their lovers and their mates. I was, in my first in- 

 vestigations and observations, so unfortunate, that, not hav- 

 ing ever seen them couple, I supposed them hermaphrodites 

 and able to give fertile eggs without union. But time, pa- 

 tience, constancy and I may even say persistence, have 

 enabled me to see and recognize what no one had seen be- 

 fore. The following is the result of my observations on the 

 sex of spiders. 



The diadema spider was that which I examined spe- 

 cially in order to understand the generation and thence the 

 sexual organs. For greater clearness, I give here a figure 

 (Plate 2, fig. 1.') representing the female of this spider of 



h. An obscure passage : "non ammettendo in loro poligamia, ma ema 

 specie di societa conjugale." [Reviser.] 



i. It was not thought worth while to reproduce this second plate in the 

 present translation. [Reviser.] 



