THE IVIASTER INSTINCT 



and female pride do not differ in their genesis or 

 natural history from the pride displayed in barn- 

 yards and in the fields and woods — it is all the out- 

 come of the old command to increase and multiply 

 — it is the masterful desire of one sex to make it- 

 self attractive to the opposite. 



A great number of insect forms die as soon as they 

 have fulfilled the Biblical injunction. This is true 

 of all the ephemera, and at least one form of verte- 

 brates, the lampreys; these perish as soon as they 

 have spawned. 



The cockchafer dies in a month after completing 

 its metamorphosis. The seventeen-year locusts and 

 the grasshoppers live but a short time after they 

 have deposited their eggs. Nature has no further 

 use for them. Many of the moths deposit their eggs 

 within twenty-four hours after they escape from the 

 chrysalis-case, and then very soon die. Many kinds 

 of flies live only four or five hours — just long 

 enough to lay their eggs. As soon as a drone of the 

 hive-bee has fertilized the queen, the swarm has no 

 further use for the whole tribe of drones and they 

 are mercilessly killed or expelled from the hive. 

 Nature displays the same superabundance of the 

 fertilizing principle in such cases that she does in the 

 trees and plants that cast their pollen upon the wind. 

 This is to offset the element of chance. The services 

 of only one drone is required, but the swarm develoi)s 

 scores of them to make sure that at least one male 



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