THE NATURAL 



more often only a physiological exercise, at once neces- 

 sary and disinterested. Fabre, who lived all his life 

 among the implacable noises of the Provencal country- 

 side, sees in "the violin of the locust, in the bag-pipe of 

 the tree-toad, in the cymbals of the cacan only a means 

 suitable to expressing the joy of living, the universal joy 

 which each animal species celebrates in its own fashion. * 

 Why then is the female mute? It is certainly absurd 

 and profoundly useless to summon, in almost uninter- 

 rupted song, from mom till eve, a companion whom one 

 sees seated beside one pumping the juice out of a plane- 

 tree; but it has perhaps not always been so. The two 

 sexes may have had, in the past, habits more divergent. 

 The plane-tree which unites them in the same feeding- 

 ground has not always grown in Provence. The un- 

 ending song may have been useful at a time when the 

 sexes lived separate, and may have remained as evidence 

 of ancient customs. It is moreover a commonly observed 

 fact that activities long survive the period of their 

 utility. Man and all animals are full of maniac gestures 

 whose movement is only explicable on the hypothesis that 

 it had once a different intention. 



The female spider is nearly always superior to the 

 male in size, industry, activity, and means of defence and 

 attack. We will note their sexual habits later, but must 

 observe here their particular cases of dimorphism. The 

 Madagascar she-epeire is enormous, very handsome, 

 black, red, silver and gold. She rigs up a formidable 

 web in her tree, near which one sees always a modest and 

 puerile skein, the work of a minuscule male keeping an 



Souvenirs entomologiques, tome V. p. 256. 

 40 



