Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1909 edition. Excerpt: ... REVISION OF THE ATTIDAE OF NORTH AMERICA. GEOBGE W. PECKHAM AND ELIZABETH O. PECKHAM. INTRODUCTION. The modifications of form and color among the males of the Attidae 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 maturity, 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 integument; but to one who has seen the attitudes taken by the males when, decked in their finery, they compete in display and engage in" feat9 of arms for the favor of the females, the conviction comes that the key to the problem lies in the relation between the beauty of the male and the attentive eyes of his mate. That female selection is the explanation must seem unreasonable, and even absurd, to those who, like Plateau and Forel, have established to their own satisfaction that the eye of the spider 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 Attidae and other ihunting spiders, made by Alexander Petrunkevitch. The method of this obser25--S. & A. ver was, after preparing the eye, to determine the number of rods covered by an object of given...
