No. 519] THE COURTSHIP OF ARAN E ADS 161 



recognize the female only by touch, when he came in 

 contact with her he immediately placed several of his 

 feet upon her, she drew her legs close to her side and he 

 got upou her dorsum. Also in Misumeua aleataria I saw. 

 on several occasions, that the minute male always found 

 the female by touch, and quickly climbed upon her. In 

 this family, accordingly, even though diurnal, there is 

 no courtship and the male gains the female by superior 

 agility aided by his smaller size. 



The lycosids comprise crepuscular and nocturnal 

 species, few of them hunting in the sunlight. Menge 

 (1877) observed a female of Trochosa terricola Thor. 

 build a nest in moss, and a male lying for hours before 

 this hole "striking lightly here and there with the palps 

 and fore legs," after which the female allowed him to 

 embrace her. A similar courtship was seen by Mrs. 

 Treat (1879) in another lycosid, the species not positively 

 identified; the female lives in a silken burrow which the 

 male approaches very cautiously; she "slowly advances 

 to meet him, and he slowly retreats from the mouth of 

 the den, moving l>arkward while she moves forward, 

 just reaching him with the tips of her fore legs as if 

 caressing him"; this backward and forward progression 

 of the two is repeated many times. Observations on 

 other lycosids have been made by me (1903). In 

 Lycosa bilineata (Em.) (L. ocreata pulchra Montg.) the 

 anterior male tibiae are provided with thick brushes of 

 vertical hairs, making them very conspicuous, but though 

 the sexes recognize each other by sight there is no court- 

 ship; in one case a male simply jumped upon the female, 

 in another after touching the female the male withdrew 

 a little and quivered these legs slightly, the female moved 

 towards him and lie jumped upon her. 



