REVISION OF THE ATTIDAE OF NORTH AMERICA. 
GEORGE W. PEGKHAM AND ELIZABETH G. PECKHAM. 
INTRODUCTION. 
The modifications of form and color among the males of the 
Attidse give them an interest that cannot be found in any other 
family of spiders. Considering the tiny scale upon which they 
are built this ornamentation is amazingly elaborate. Their 
delicate little bodies, marked with patterns of infinite variety, 
are sometimes colored with vivid contrasts of crimson, black 
and white, or they may be clothed in rainbow-hued scales. Their 
heads are crested, their legs are hung with pendent scales or 
plumed with feathery fringes. To explain all this beauty, which 
comes, as a rule, only to the males, and to them only at matur¬ 
ity, two theories are offered. Mr. Wallace would say that it 
results from the correlation of high vitality with intensity of 
color and a tendency to abnormal developments of the integu¬ 
ment ; but to one who has seen the attitudes taken by the males 
when, decked in their finery, they compete in display and en¬ 
gage in feats of arms for the favor of the females, the convic¬ 
tion colmes that the key to the problem lies in the relation be¬ 
tween the beauty of the male and the attentive eyes of his mate. 
That female selection is the explanation must seem unreason¬ 
able, and even absurd, to those who, like Plateau and Forel, 
have established to their own satisfaction that the eye of the spi¬ 
der is unable to receive a distinct image, but its adherents have 
recently received encouragement from the admirable studies 
on the structure of the eyes of Attidse and other hunting spiders, 
made by Alexander Petrunkevitch. The method of this obser- 
25—S. & A. 
