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Spiders are naturally very selfish creatures. Their chief concern in life seems to be the gratification of their desires for food. They are eminently unsocial, the sexes preferring to live solitary lives. It is only when actuated by amatory influences that the females will tolerate their weaker lords, and in some instances it is only by stratagem and agility that the latter are able to accomplish the fulfilment of the law of their being, the females by their ugly, vicious tempers resisting to the utmost. In the case of Agalena the male is the stronger of the two. He, at the proper time, when the reproductive cells are matured, takes the female in his powerful mandibles, lays her gently on one side, and inserts one of his palpi, whose little sacs had previously been filled with the fecundating discharge, into the epigynum underneath. After a time, necessarily brief, he rises on tiptoe, turns her around and over, so that she comfortably lies on the other side, her head being in the opposite direction, and inserts the other palpus. All through the operation the female lies as though she was dead. The ends of nature being served, the sexes separate, the male returning to the solitary life he previously led, while the female busies herself in providing for the duties of maternity.