244 
E. A. ANDREWS 
of seizure. Once the chela has taken hold it does not often relax, 
but the second is added and henceforth the hold is maintained. 
Immediately, or sometimes after an interval, the male that has 
seized a female enters upon a struggle, a sort of wrestling, that 
leads to the second act, the turning of the female. Viewing this 
process, it is hard to escape the impression that the male has a 
purpose in view to which instinct leads with even what looks like 
intelligence sometimes assisting. 
At times one must admire the solution of the problem of turning 
over another body braced upon ten legs and actively resistant. 
But again the clumsy efforts of the female seem to bring about 
a happy chance position that the male utilizes. 
Sooner or later the female is upside down and still held by both 
chelae of the male. The second phase of the activity, the mount- 
ing, now follows : It is not known how the male is aware of the 
inverted position of the female, but the complex actions that 
follow lead one to believe that the sense of touch and muscle sense 
give the male a means of quite accurate response to the form and 
position of the female. The male mounts upon the female so 
that the ventral surfaces of the two are near together. The 
male then brings the two into a position in which the median 
planes of both coincide and, their heads being in the same direc- 
tion the right of the male is over the left of the female and vice 
versa, fig. 1. 
After this mounting comes the difficult phase of claw-clasping, 
which seems to satisfy a strong instinct. The object attained is 
that most all the legs of the female are firmly held in the two 
chelae of the male. The old hold of the chelae is gradually 
changed, without letting the female at any time free from the 
grasp of one chela. Generally in a very few minutes all the left 
clawed legs of the female are held by the right chela of the male 
and all the right clawed legs by the left chela of the male. 
This feat i^s facilitated by the habit of the female, when seized, 
of throwing all the legs forward and upw^ard alongside of the head, 
so that they are much more readily taken hold of in a bunch than 
could otherwise be the case. Yet the male that has hold of but 
few legs generally tries till all are finally grasped, exhibiting what 
seems a strong desire to hold them all. 
