Fig. 54.
Fig. 55.
At length the male succeeds in getting under the female’s abdomen, and inserting his palpi into the epigynum. [Fig. 55] shows the female hanging in the web, with the male at a, with his legs grasped around her abdomen.
The habits of these spiders furnish the grounds for the popular story, that female spiders regularly eat the males. No doubt it occasionally happens, where the female is the larger of the two; but in many species they live together for some time in the same web, or in a nest spun for the purpose; in some cases, before the female has reached the adult state.