PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



anxious eye on the chance of sidling up to his terrible 

 mistress, and risking his wedding-death. The argyronete 

 or water-spider, returns the balance to the male, who is 

 fatter, larger, and provided with longer limbs. 



The male triumphs again, and more frequently, among 

 coleoptera. The nasicorn scarab, so called most aptly 

 because he carries on his head a long back-bending arched 

 horn, has all his chest solidly armoured; the female has 

 neither horn nor cuirass. Everyone knows the flying- 

 stag or lucane (stag-beetle, bull-fly), enormous coleop- 

 tera which flies through the summer evening buzzing 

 like a top. He is feared for the bold appearance of his 

 long mandibles which branch like stag's horns and which 

 the uninstructed take for dangerous pincers. He is the 

 male, his war-gear pure ornament, as he lives inoffen- 

 sively by sucking tree-sap. The much smaller females 

 are devoid of warlike apparatus, they are very few in 

 number, and it is in the excitement of searching for them 

 that the male, whose life is short and who knows it, 

 whirls like a maniac, and bangs himself into our trem- 

 bling ears. Here again one divines animals who have 

 changed their habits more quickly than their organs. 

 The old pirate has kept his daggers and axes, but aban- 

 doned, no one knows why, to vegetarian diet, he has lost 

 all power to use them, he is merely a stage-super. But 

 maybe this gear impresses the female? She cedes more 

 willingly to this hector who gives her the illusion of 

 strength, that is of the male's beauty. 



The glow-worm is a real worm, but a larva rather 

 than a definitive animal. The male of this female is a 

 perfect insect, provided with wings which he uses to 



