PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



the female or queen having a head almost as large as that 

 of a bee, a belly the thickness of one's finger, long in 

 proportion, and growing to be fifteen times as large as 

 the rest of her body. This sexual tub lays continuously 

 without any let-up at the speed of an egg per second. 

 The male, as in Baudelaire's vision of the giantess, lives 

 in the shadow of this formidable mountain of female 

 power and luxury. Among the termites there is not a 

 fourth sex but a fourth way of being sexless. There are 

 soldiers as well as workers, the soldiers having powerful 

 mandibles mounted on enormous heads. All the termite 

 customs are extraordinary, and their conic nests reach a 

 height having a relation to them that a house five or 

 six hundred metres high would have to us. 



Of mosquitoes and maringouin mosquitoes and all in- 

 sects of that sort, the females alone prick and suck the 

 blood of mammifers. The males live on flowers and 

 tree-trunks. One sees them in forest alleys and clear- 

 ings, moving regularly as in army manoeuvres, they are 

 scouting, watching for females; as soon as a male has 

 caught one he seizes her, and disappears up into the air 

 where the union is accomplished. Only the male cricket 

 has a noise-machine, only the female a hearing mechan- 

 ism, situated in her front legs. Likewise it is the male 

 grasshopper who sounds. A love-call? People say so, 

 but there is no proof. Grasshoppers live, male and 

 female in complete promiscuity lined up on the tree- 

 bark; such a quantity of music is unnecessary, and 

 moreover if the female grasshopper isn't deaf, she has 

 an almost insensible hearing. It is probable that the song 

 of insects and birds, if it is sometimes a love-call, is 

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