Chapter 10 MECHANISM OF LOVE

II. Copulation (continued).-Arthropodes.-Scorpions.-Large aquatic crustaceans.-Small crustaceans.-The hydrachne.-Scutilary.-Cockchafer.-Butterflies.-Flies, etc.-Variation of animals' sexual habits.

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Among insects, batrachians, and mollusks one finds the most curious modes of fecundation and those furthest removed from the usual mechanism of mammals; before coming to that we will give a few examples, toward forming an idea of the sexual habits of various species chosen from the arthropodes. In scorpions, let us say, terrestrial representatives of aquatic crustaceans: the two sexes are identical, genital organs usually invisible, hidden between the abdomen and the cephalothorax, the front part of it where the head without neck is prolonged directly into the thorax. The male is provided with two rigid penes englobed in a sheath-double but forming a single canal; holding the female belly to belly he inserts them in the vulva, one branch bending to the left, the other to the right toward each of the two oviducts. Same mechanism in crustaceans, save in the rare cases when they are hermaphrodite. Lobsters, langousts, écrevisses, crabs, like the scorpion, couple in a manner singularly resembling that of humans. Curious spectacle, that of the hen lobster attacked by the male, turned on her back, patiently permitting him to stretch over her, enlacing her claws and his pincers! Vision of a sabbat which Callot or Doré would only have painted in fear. Perhaps one would consider this before opening the armoured belly of these beasts who have bred their species among alg?, and in holes of the rocks? The genital glands of crustaceans are excellent; people gladly eat those of the sea-anemone; the only good part of these spiny animals. The males of the greater crustaceans have erectile ejectory canals, rising in the form of double prong between the forefeet; the females are correspondingly provided with two vulv? opening in the third sternal segment, or at the base of the feet corresponding to this segment. Copulation is effected by quick acts, reiterated two or three times, lasting a quarter of an hour. The male of the fresh water prawn who swims leaning on his side, holds his female between his claws and progresses by bounds; she is much smaller than he is. Same mechanism in aselle and talitre or sea-flea.

There are many singularities in the sexual habits of small crustaceans, the male bopyre lives as parasite on the female, who is four or five times larger; oddity increased by the female herself being the parasite of the palemon. It is she who forms the little bloatedness which one notices, grayish when cooked, on the heads of shrimps, turned pink. Fishermen state that this spot is a small sole, but they also tell other yarns: for example, that anatifes, the peduncular mussels which one sees on drift-wood are the embryos of wild-ducks, and one noble sailor has himself seen them taking flight.[1] The male linguatula is also smaller than the female, he has one testicle but two long copulating organs which simultaneously penetrate the female, ejaculating toward the two ovaries. Another small male is the hydrachne, water acarian, two or three times smaller than the female, he alone is provided with a tail at the end of which are his genital organs; the female's are formed by a papilla situated beneath the belly and marked by a white patch surrounding the sluice. The male swims, the female comes to meet him, lifts herself obliquely and brings her white spot into touch with her lover's caudal extremity, the junction is accomplished. One then sees the male drag along the kicking female; the coupling, with periods of rest, but without interruption of profound contact continues for several days.

With insects of superior talents it is, on the contrary, the female who carries off the male: the ant carries hers on her back, while he bends his abdomen into a bow toward her vulva; thus weighted, she flies, mounts, planes, then falls with him like a drop of water. He dies on the spot, the female gets up, returns to the nest, lays, before dying. The fetes of the ant are of the whole ant hill at once, the fall of the lovers like a golden cascade, and the resurrection of the females gleams in the sun like a russet foam. The scutilary is an insect sometimes squarish or shield-shaped resembling the green wood louse, sometimes long and cylindrical with points and lines of all colours on its wings. One of them, scutiform, known as lineata, with red back and black stripes, is common on umbellifera. Copulation takes place end to end; one can see them thus, the female towing the smaller male from leaf to leaf, from umbel to umbel.[2] The forficula also couple end to end, fleas, whose male is smaller, couple belly to belly with feet enlaced; the position recalling that of dragon flies is more remarkable, in the louvette, a small insect which lives on broom, and readily throws itself upon man: the vulva is in fact, near the mouth.

Coleoptera are given to cavalage, of duration varying from ten hours to two days. The male cockchafer pursues the female with fervour, he is so ardent that he often mounts other males, deceived by the odour of rut floating in the air. He seizes the female and holds her clamped by his forelegs and genital hooks. The union continues a day and a night, finally the male, exhausted, falls over backward, and still hooked by the penial pincers, is dragged along on his back by the impassive female who moves on feeding, pulling him over the leaves until death detaches him; then she lays and dies in her turn. Butterflies are likewise very fervent, the males make veritable voyages in quest of females, as Fabre has proved. They often fly coupled, the stronger female easily carrying the male: it is a quite frequent sight in the country, these butterflies with four wings who roll, a little bewildered from flower to flower, drunken ships going where the sails bid them. With flies, feminism is brought frankly into the love mechanism. The females have the copulative apparatus; they force their oviduct, then a veritable prong, into the male's belly; it is the females who make the mastering gesture, the male merely grips this gimlet with the hooks which surround his genital fent. It is this same augur which the female uses to bore the wood, or earth or flesh where she deposits her eggs. The coupling is end to end, and one of the easiest to observe.

Here are enough examples to show what is permanent in the mechanism of true copulation, and what is variable in its exterior modes. Given the two chief pieces of the apparatus, the sword and the scabbard, nature, as one might say, leaves it to the imagination of each specie to decide the best manner of using them; all ways seem good if they fecundate. Nature has still more remarkable methods, for the sexual inventions of humanity are nearly all anterior or exterior to man. There is not one whose model, even perfected, is not offered him by the animals, by the most humble of animals.

If there is no general rule, if there is no one moral manner of fecundating a female, one must recognize that the same mode is fixed in the same specie, in the same genus or family. I do not think that anyone has observed variation in the sexual habits of an animal; yet acts of sheer disembarrassment being possible, one can not consider the love method as being rigorously fixed. It has varied in social bees, parting from the relation of the couple, the aggression of the male, to end in the political and autocratic fecundation of a sole female by a sole male chosen among an hundred slave favourites. The mechanism itself must have changed with the change of the organs, complying with corporal circumstances and with those of the milieu, under pressure of the nervous system which demands acts without caring for the instruments which must execute them. One finds proof of these changes in the accidental hermaphrodism of a great number of invertebrates and even of fishes, such as the cod, the herring, the scomber: a fundamental change since it shifts the animal from a superior to an inferior category; a recall to origins, doubtless, and an indication that the species liable to such accidents are far from being physiologically fixed. It is very probable that analogous accidents, less accentuated, visible sometimes in exterior malformation, invisible in their psychological influence, are the cause of certain tendencies in contrast to the sex apparent or even real. But this does not yet answer the main question: are there in animals, apart from purely mechanical aberrations, erotic fantasies? One can not answer with certainty. The animal merely follows a groove; when he has gone through it, if he lives for another season, he merely goes over the same ground, attentive to the same need, submitted always to the same gestures. Very true, but the animals familiar to man or his neighbours, the dog, the ape, perhaps the cat, are assuredly capable of erotic fantasies; it is therefore difficult to deny this tendency to other animals, to the so intelligent hymenoptera, for example. Who knows, moreover, whether certain eccentric modes of copulation are not fixed fantasies, become habit and having supplanted an anterior method, the animal being little able to employ two customs at once?

What we have found, at least, is that the love mechanism is, in nature, of infinite variety, and that if it appears stable in most of the fixed species, it is, in its entirety extremely oscillating, capricious, and fantastic.

[1] The name of these cirripedes bears witness to this superstition: anatife is the abridgement of anatifere, duck-bearing, latin anas, anatis, "A tree equally marvelous, is that which produces barnacles, for the fruits of this tree change into birds." (Mandeville's Travels.)

[2] This does not seem to be general. I have recently observed, on the umbels of wild carrots, numerous couples of scutilaries, proceeding by cavalage, the male inert, couched on the walking female, who started at the least alarm. Form narrow, almost cylindrical; colour: orange red, with two short black bands: strong sucker, long antenn?. Union lasting at least a day and a night.-R. de G.

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