UNDER THE APPLE-TREES 
female, though often with obvious signs of hesitancy 
and trepidation. Love overcomes the lover’s fear 
of the ferocious jaws of his mistress. The same is 
true of the praying-mantis and the scorpion, as 
portrayed by the inimitable Fabre. After hours or 
days of love and nuptial bliss, the female turns and 
slays her lover, and makes a meal off him. The 
human, or, rather, inhuman, Bluebeard is matched 
on the other side of the house. Love and martyrdom 
go hand in hand with honey-bees, spiders, and scor- 
pions. Eating up your mate is certainly a simple 
and primitive way out of matrimonial difficulties. 
Is it not probable that in all such cases the female 
obtains some nutritive element, maybe in minute 
quantities, from the body of the male that is neces- 
sary for the complete development of her young? 
The purpose of Nature must be served in some way 
in such a tragedy, as it is when certain species eat 
the placenta and when the toad devours his cast-off 
skin. 
Weismann has suggested that the bodies of an- 
imals are but appendages to the immortal chain of 
sex cells — they are only the vessels in which the 
precious germs are nourished and: conveyed, the 
body bearing the relation to them of host to para- 
site. 
So solicitous is Nature for the well-being of the 
offspring that she will rob the mother’s body, if 
insufficiently nourished, to feed the baby she is car- 
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