Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 6.djvu/663

Rh universally, the case among spiders, the female is the head of the family. In fact, so scarce are the males that for three years I never found one among more than a hundred specimens. This, however, is not absolute proof of their much smaller number, for they are less in size and darker in color, and, like the males of the "silk-spider of

 Fig. 2.—At the left a female Hyptiotes, enlarged about eight diameters. The legs are marked 1, 2, 3, 4, in order from before backward. In the central figure is shown the front part of the spider (the cephalo-thorax), still more enlarged, so as to display the eight eyes arranged so as to form two crescents with their convexities opposed thus ≈. At the right is a greatly magnified feathered bristle from the upper surface of the cephalothorax.

South Carolina" (Nephila plumipes), they make no nets, but seem to get a precarious living by hanging on to that of some female. Their masculine nature is seen in the structure of the "palp" or feeler, which, instead of tapering to a blunt point, as in the female, is greatly enlarged, its last segment presenting the remarkably complex structure seen in Fig. 3.