le, in alarm, endeavoured to escape.
In a few minutes the female succeeded in grasping him. She bit
off his left front tarsus and consumed the tibia and femur. Next
she gnawed out his left eye. At this the male seemed to realise
his proximity to one of the opposite sex, and began vain
endeavours to mate. The female next ate up his right front leg,
and then entirely decapitated him, devouring his head and
gnawing into his thorax. Not until she had eaten all his thorax,
except about three millimetres did she stop to rest. All this
while the male had continued in his vain attempt to obtain
entrance at the valvula, and he now succeeded, and she
voluntarily spread the parts open, and union took place. She
remained quiet for four hours, and the remnant of the male gave
occasional signs of life, by a movement of one of his remaining
tarsi for three hours. The next morning she had entirely rid
herself of her spouse, and nothing but his wings remained."

You will think, perhaps, that this extreme case of female ferocity has
little bearing upon our sexual passions. But consider. I have not
quoted it, as is done by Professor Ward, to prove the existence of the
superiority of the female in Nature. No, rather I want to suggest a
lesson that may be wrested by us from these first courtships in the
life histories of the sexes. I spoke at the beginning of this
biological section of my book of the warnings that surely would come
as we traced the evolution of our love-passions from those of our
pre-human ancestors. We are too apt to ignore the tremendous force
that the sex-impulse has gathered from its incalculably long history.
As animals exhibit in their love-matings the analogies of the human
virtue, it is not surprising to find the occurrence of parallel vices.
Let us look for a moment at this in the light of the fierce
love-contest of the female spider.

Of this habit there are various explanations; the prevalent one
regards the spider as an anomalous exception; the ferocity and
superiority of size in the female not easily to be explained. This is,
I think, not so. Is it not rather a picture, with the details crudely
emphasised, of the action of Life-Force of which the sexes are both
the helpless victims? Whether we look backward to the beginning, where
the exhausted male-cell seeks the female in incipient sexual union, or
onwards through the long stages of sex-evolution t