THE NATURAL 



the caterpillar which serves it as uterus. Thus consid- 

 ered the notion of parasitism temporary or larval will 

 disappear, or, rather, take a much greater extension, en- 

 veloping a considerable number of facts up till now 

 separated in irreducible categories. 



Fecundation by contact is very rare in fish, other than 

 selacians. One hardly finds it save in lophobranchi and 

 certain other viviparous fish, such as the blenny ; the milt 

 penetrates the female organs without copulation, and the 

 eggs develop either in these organs, or in a pouch which 

 the male carries under his belly, or even in the male's 

 mouth, he having thus the virtue of assuring the birth 

 of his offspring. The lophobranchi are wholly singular 

 fish, one of them, the sea-horse, horse-headed ludion, 

 gives a good idea of the family. Ordinary fish, such as 

 one knows and eats, however M. de Lacepede may have 

 classified them, are chaste animals void of all erotic 

 fantasy. 



What would appear to be the essential of pleasure is 

 unknown to them. The males do not know possession 

 nor the females surrender, no touch, no rubbings, no 

 caress. The object of male desire is not the female but 

 the eggs, he watches for those she is about to lay, he 

 searches for those she has laid, an excitement quite like 

 those produced by onanism, or which are engendered by 

 fetishism in certain distorted minds and which operate 

 at the sight of a slipper or ribbon, and die down, even 

 to frigidity in the presence of the woman herself. The 

 fish spends his semen on eggs which he finds floating 

 and whose mother he has never seen. Often both eggs 

 and male milt are left floating and meet only in the 

 102 



