232 THE COURTSHIP OF ANIMALS 



unique. Yet for all its strangeness it enables us to set 

 our compasses, so to speak, in regard to the phenomena 

 of sex in other groups. The extraordinary disparity in 

 the proportions between male and female, for example, 

 is full of significance, for it shows, as has been suggested 

 more than once in these pages, that, in the case of poly- 

 gamous species, we are probably in error in supposing that 

 the excess of females is due to the reduction in the number 

 of males by reason of the eUmination of males by fighting. 

 The excess of males, or females, as the case may be, is 

 due to an inherent quality in the germ-plasm. The May- 

 fly might be regarded as an excessively polyandrous 

 species if the number of males in relation to females alone 

 be regarded : but actually it is monogamous. After a 

 prosaic infancy they are suddenly transformed into gay 

 lovers, dancing a marriage-dance. But for them is no 

 marriage feast, nor any later sequence of domesticity. 

 One in ten thousand may find a mate, and only in this 

 is he more fortunate than his neighbours, for, like them, 

 he too must die before the dawn. Theirs is not even a 

 sleep and a forgetting, but " one splendid hour of Life, 

 and then — oblivion." It may be urged that even these 

 which might seem to have been fooled, have not really 

 lived in vain, for hosts of animals feast upon their bodies. 

 Myriads, indeed, are snapped up by fishes even before 

 they have opened their wings, while birds rudely invade 

 the swarms as they dance in mid-air, feasting on these 

 fasting ones. But this is, after all, an inglorious end, 

 and leaves us still asking Cui bono ? 



Is this amazing life-history a thing of yesterday, a 

 new phase, or an order of things as old as the origin of 

 the species, dating back some millions of years ? 



So far as one can profitably speculate on such a theme 



