THE NATURAL 



seek in the darkness the female who shines more brightly 

 as she more desires to be looked at and mounted. There 

 is a kind of lampyre of which both sexes are equally 

 phosphorescent, one in the air, the male, the other 

 on the ground where she awaits him. After coupling 

 they fade as lamps when extinguished. This lumi- 

 nosity is, evidently, of an interest purely sexual. 

 When the female sees the small flying star descend to- 

 ward her, she gathers her wits, and prepares for hypocrite 

 defence common to all her sex, she plays the belle and 

 the bashful, exults in fear, trembles in joy. The fading 

 light is symbolic of the destiny of nearly all insects, and 

 of many animals also; coupling accomplished, their rea- 

 son for being disappears and life vanishes from them. 

 The male cochineal has a long body with very delicate 

 wings, transparent and which at a distance look like 

 those of a bee; he is provided with a sort of tail formed 

 of two silky strands. One sees him flying over the nopals, 

 then suddenly alighting on a female, who resembles a fat 

 wood-louse round and puffy, twice as stout as the male, 

 wingless. Glued by her feet to a branch, with her pro- 

 boscis stuck into it, continually pumping sap, she looks 

 like a fruit, like an oak-apple or oak-gall on a peduncle 

 for which reason Reaumur called her picturesquely the 

 gall-insect. In certain species of cocides the male is so 

 small that his proportion is that of an ant strolling over 

 a peach. His goings and comings are like those of an ant 

 hunting for a soft spot to bite, but he is seeking the 

 genital cleft, and having found it, often after long and 

 anxious explorations, he fulfills his functions, falls off 

 and dies. 



42 



