THE NATURAL 



Among all solitary bees, scolies, masons, bembex, and 

 anthopores, the males born soonest, range about the nests 

 awaiting the birth of the females. As soon as these 

 appear they are seized and fecundated, knowing, thus, 

 life and love in the same shiver. The female osmies 

 and other bees are keenly watched by the males who 

 nab and mount them as they emerge from the natal tube, 

 the hollow stalk of a reed, flying at once with them into 

 the air where the love-feast is finished. Then while 

 the male, drunk with his work, continues his death- 

 flight, the female feverishly hollows the house of her 

 offspring, partitions it, stores the honey for the larvae, 

 lays, whirls for an instant and dies. The year following: 

 the same gestures above the same reeds split by the reed- 

 gatherers; and thus in years following, the insect per- 

 mitted never the least design save the conservation of 

 one fragile form; brief apparition over flowers. 



The sitaris is a coleopterous parasite in the nests of 

 the anthopore. Copulation takes place on hatching. 

 Fabre noticed a female still in her wrappings, whom a 

 male already free was helping to get loose, waiting only 

 the appearance of the extremity of the abdomen, to hurl 

 himself thereupon. The sitaris' love lasts one minute, 

 long season in a short life: the male drags on for two 

 days before dying, the female lays on the very spot 

 where she has been fecundated, dies, having known 

 nothing but the maternal function in the strictest limit 

 of her birthplace. 



No one has ever seen the female palingenia. This 

 butterfly is fecundated before even getting rid of her 

 nymph's corset, she dies with her eyes still shut, mother, 

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