§4 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD 



the males have time to escape ; for I once surprised a 

 male, apparently in the performance of his vital func- 

 tions, holding the female tightly embraced — but he had 

 no head, no neck, scarcely any thorax ! The female, her 

 head turned over her shoulder, was peacefully browsing 

 on the remains of her lover ! And the masculine 

 remnant, firmly anchored, continued its duty ! 



Love, it is said, is stronger than death ! Taken 

 literally, never has an aphorism received a more striking 

 confirmation. Here was a creature decapitated, ampu- 

 tated as far as the middle of the thorax j a corpse which 

 still struggled to give life. It would not relax its hold 

 until the abdomen itself, the seat of the organs of 

 procreation, was attacked. 



The custom of eating the lover after the consummation 

 of the nuptials, of making a meal of the exhausted 

 pigmy, who is henceforth good for nothing, is not so 

 difficult to understand, since insects can hardly be 

 accused of sentimentality ; but to devour him during the 

 act surpasses anything that the most morbid mind could 

 imagine. I have seen the thing with my own eyes, and 

 I have not yet recovered from my surprise. 



Could this unfortunate creature have fled and saved 

 himself, being thus attacked in the performance of his 

 functions ? No. We must conclude that the loves of 

 the Mantis are fully as tragic, perhaps even more so, than 

 those of the spider. I do not deny that the limited area 

 of the cage may favour the massacre of the males ; but 

 the cause of such butchering must be sought elsewhere. 

 It is perhaps a reminiscence of the carboniferous period 

 when the insect world gradually took shape through 

 prodigious procreation. The Orthoptera, of \vliich the 



