traction of the sexes for each other; the bird which warbles, the
mammal which ruts, the insect which hums while pursuing the female
with implacable tenacity, at the risk of their own life, employing
sometimes cunning, sometimes dexterity, and sometimes force to attain
their object. The ardor of the female is not always much less, but she
uses coquetry, pretending to resist, and simulates repulsion. The more
eager the male, the more coquettish is the female. If we observe the
amorous sport of butterflies and birds, we see what efforts it costs
the male to attain his object. On the other hand when the male is
clumsy and slow the female often comes toward him or at any rate does
not resist him, for instance in certain ants the males of which are
wingless while the females have wings. The final act always consists
in intimate union at the moment of copulation.

In some animals Nature is prodigal in the means she employs to pursue
her great object, reproduction, by aid of the sexual appetite. The
apiary raises hundreds of male bees. As soon as the single queen-bee
takes wing for its nuptial flight all the males follow, but a single
male only, the strongest and most nimble, succeeds in reaching her. In
the intoxication of copulation he abandons all his genital organs to
the body of the queen and dies. The other males, now useless, are all
massacred in autumn by the working bees.

Sexual connection among butterflies of the Bombyx family is no less
marvelous. They live for months as caterpillars and sometimes for two
years as chrysalids, hibernating in a cocoon in some corner of the
earth or in the bark of trees. Finally the butterfly, brilliantly
colored, emerges from the cocoon and spreads its wings. It only
possesses, however, a rudimentary intestinal canal for the short life
which remains, for it does not require much nourishment and is only
devoted to sexual connection. The female remains quiet and waits. The
male, furnished with large antennae which perceive the odor of the
female at a distance of several kilometers, commences an infatuated
flight through the woods and fields, as soon as his wings are
sufficiently strong. His sole object is to reach the female. Here
again there are numerous competitors. The one who arrives first
possesses the female, but expires shortly afterward. His competitors
die also, exhausted by their long flight and by starvation, but
without having attained their object. After copulation, the f