THE NATURAL 



CHAPTER XIV 



THE MECHANISM OF LOVE 



VI. Cannibalism in sex. Females who devour the male, 

 those who devour the spermatophore. Probable use of 

 these practices. Fecundation by the whole male. 

 Loves of the white joreheaded dectic. The green 

 grasshopper. The Alpine analote. The ephippigere. 

 Further reflections of the cannibalism of sex. Loves 

 of the praying mantis. 



THE spider eats her male; the mantis eats her male; in 

 locustians, the female is fecundated by a spermatophore, 

 an enormous genital bunch-of-grapes. She gnaws through 

 this envelope of spermatozoides to the last shred. These 

 two facts should be brought together. Whether the 

 female swallow the male entire, or only the product of 

 his genital glands, it is probably in both cases a comple- 

 mentary act of fecundation. There are possibly in the 

 male, assimilable elements necessary for the development 

 of the eggs, almost as the albumen of seeds, little 

 aborted plants, is necessary for nourishing the vegetable 

 embryo, surviving plantlet. Plants, according to recent 

 study, are born twins: in order to live one must devour 

 the other. Shifted to animal life, and slightly modified, 

 this mechanism explains what one terms, from sentimen- 

 talism, the sexual ferocity of the she-mantis and the she- 

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