OF GENERATION. 329 



copulation. In Melolonlha, knobs of the penis correspond with lateral 

 pockets of the vagina, which promotes their firm adherence, or else the 

 penis itself is provided with barbs, which so affix themselves to the 

 vagina of the female, that the penis, after the completed intercourse, 

 remains in the vagina, as Huber says he has observed in the bees. 

 Audouin* also found the muscular portion of the penis completely torn 

 off in the aperture of the spermatheca. 



Some naturalists, namely, Oken, have suggested the question whether 

 insects during copulation feel any voluptuousness, and the latter wishes 

 to deny it, but incorrectly, as I imagine. Whoever has observed the 

 ardour of the males before their intercourse, and their anxiety to attain 

 their object by every possible means, and Avhen, having attained it, 

 their total abstraction in the delight of their ultimate success ; and also 

 how every other function visibly reposes, to admit of the entire energy 

 of the body being devoted to this most important one, must speedily, I 

 think, give up such an opinion. Is not, also, the ultimate gratification 

 of an internal urgent passion, for which no sacrifice is avoided, the 

 highest voluptuousness ? and does not the observation of every indi- 

 vidual copulation of insects most distinctly prove the presence of such 

 an urging passion ? The great multiplicity of nerves, likewise distributed 

 throughout the internal organs of generation, their turgescence before 

 and during copulation, and their exhaustion subsequently, admits of no 

 other explanation : the so-much-enjoyed pleasure alone can exhaust and 

 emaciate to the extent that we observe in male insects after its accom- 

 plishment, and not the mere satisfaction of the sexual instinct. 



208. 



By means of the connexion between the male and female, the latter 

 is impregnated, which produces the development of the germs of the 

 eggs. Impregnation, consequently, is produced by the male by the 

 sperm secreted by the testes, and which is a milkwhite clammy opaque 

 substance of a peculiar smell, which chemical analysis finds to consist 

 chiefly of water, and to which is added a peculiar slimy substance, as 

 well as natron, phosphate of lime, and some nitrate of lime. Being 

 continually secreted by the testes, the sperm descends the vasa deferentia 



* See liis Lcttrc sur la Generation des Insectcs, in the Annalcs des Scicnc. Natur. 

 T. ii. p. 281. 



