302 THE COURTSHIP OF ANIMALS 



stupendous efforts; for it is evident that parthenogenesis 

 confers quite extraordinary powers of raising the birth-rate. 

 But then the normal mode of procreation is capable of 

 achieving results quite as remarkable. The queen Termite 

 or White Ant, for instance — which, by the way, is no Ant, 

 but a near relation of the Stone-flies — when in her prime 

 will lay eggs at the rate of sixty a minute, or eighty 

 thousand and upwards in the course of a day of twenty- 

 four hours. But this unenviable mode of breaking the 

 record is attended, surely, with some little inconvenience ; 

 for to attain to such fertility her abdomen increases until 

 it attains something like two thousand times that of the 

 workers of the community in which she lives. That 

 the history of the queen Termite is unique of its kind 

 is not surprising : indeed, such an amazing story could 

 only be told of creatures which enjoyed the seclusion of 

 a subterranean existence. Here, on a bare couch, with 

 her Royal spouse beside her, she lies, a bloated, heaving 

 mass, incapable of movement, depositing eggs with the 

 rhythm of a machine, the mother of offspring which she 

 will never see. A more unsightly picture of maternity 

 it would be impossible to conceive : it is well, indeed, 

 that it is hidden from the light of day. No such state of 

 affairs could ever arise among creatures living an out- 

 door life, with enemies to avoid, and food to find. 



The instances just surveyed, these extremes of the 

 potentiality of procreation, are instructive in more ways 

 than one. They are to be regarded as " excrescences " 

 of reproduction, comparable to those " excrescences " 

 of individual growth which we call " ornament," for 

 example. Individuals on whom this fertility has settled, 

 so to speak, are the victims of the machinery of sex and 

 reproduction. Their amazing powers of multiplication 



