PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



two hundred males. In spring, in a place where the great- 

 peacock is so rare that one with difficulty finds one or 

 two per year, the presence of a caged female will draw 

 a hundred males, as Fabre has shown by experiment. 

 These feverish males are endowed with very brief ardour. 

 Whether or no they have touched a female, they live 

 but two or three days. Enormous insects, larger than 

 a humming-bird, they do not eat; their bocal pieces are 

 merely an ornament, a decor: they are born to reproduce 

 and to die. The males seem infinitely more numerous 

 than the females, and it is probable that not more than 

 one in an hundred can accomplish his destiny. He who 

 misses the pursued female, who arrives too late, is lost: 

 his life is so short that it would be very difficult for 

 him to discover a second. It is true that in normal 

 circumstances the female should stop emitting her sexual 

 odour as soon as she has been ridden; the males are thus 

 attracted by the same female through a proportionately 

 shorter time and there is this much less chance of their 

 searches being unfruitful. Is it their sense of smell alone 

 that guides them? 



At 8 a. m. at Fabre's place in Serignan, one saw the 

 cocoon of a lesser-peacock moth open; a female emerged 

 and was immediately imprisoned in a wire cage. At noon 

 a male arrived, the first that Fabre, who had lived there 

 all his life, had ever seen. The wind was blowing from 

 the north. The male came from the north, that is to 

 say, against the scent. At two o'clock ten had arrived. 

 Having come as far as the house without hesitation, they 

 were troubled, got the wrong window, wandered from 

 room to room, never went directly toward the female. 

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