THE MASTER INSTINCT 
and female pride do not differ in their genesis or 
natural history from the pride displayed in barn- 
yards and in the fields and woods — it is all the out- 
come of the old command to increase and multiply 
— it is the masterful desire of one sex to make it- 
self attractive to the opposite. 
A great number of insect forms die as soon as they 
have fulfilled the Biblical injunction. This is true 
of all the ephemera, and at least one form of verte- 
brates, the lampreys; these perish as soon as they 
have spawned. 
The cockchafer dies in a month after completing 
its metamorphosis. The seventeen-year locusts and 
the grasshoppers live but a short time after they 
have deposited their eggs. Nature has no further 
use for them. Many of the moths deposit their eggs 
within twenty-four hours after they escape from the 
chrysalis-case, and then very soon die. Many kinds 
of flies live only four or five hours — just long 
enough to lay their eggs. As soon as a drone of the 
hive-bee has fertilized the queen, the swarm has no 
further use for the whole tribe of drones and they 
are mercilessly killed or expelled from the hive. 
Nature displays the same superabundance of the 
fertilizing principle in such cases that she does in the 
trees and plants that cast their pollen upon the wind. 
This is to offset the element of chance. The services 
of only one drone is required, but the swarm develops 
scores of them to make sure that at least one male 
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