THE MECHANISM OF LOVE
_V. Artificial fecundation.--Disjunction of
the secreting apparatus from the copulating
apparatus.--Spiders.--Discovery of their copulative
method.--Brutality of the female.--Habits
of the epeire.--The argyronete.--The
tarantula.--Exceptions: the reapers.--Dragon-flies
(libellule).--Dragon-flies (demoiselle) virgins and
"jouvencelle."--Picture of their love affairs._
The apparatus for secreting sperm and that for copulating are sometimes
separated. The female has a vagina normally situated; the male has no
penis, or else it is situated in some part of the body not in symmetry
with the receiving apparatus. It is then necessary either for the male
to make an artificial penis, as one has seen in the cephalopodes,
and as in the spider, or for him to engage in complicated manœuvres
to dominate the female, and to engineer the conjunction of the two
apparatus, as does the dragon-fly (libellule).
The method of most arachnids strangely resembles the medical practice
called artificial fecundation, although it is hardly more so than
normal fecundation. In both it is a question of putting spermatozoides
in the way of encountering ovules: it matters little whether phallus
or syringe be the vehicle. The spider uses a syringe. For a long time
people thought that the whole genital apparatus was situated in the
feelers of the male, but anatomy could find nothing there to resemble
it. Savigny thought that the introduction of the feelers into the
vulva was merely an excitative manœuvre, and that the true copulation
followed. One had only observed half the act, the second phase. The
first consists in the male's gathering up the semence in his own belly
with the feelers; he then places it in the female organ. The maxillary
peripalpe or antenna, thus transformed into a penis, contains a spiral
canal which the male fills in placing it against the opening of his
spermatic canals. One sees the joint of one of the knuckles open,
letting appear a white bourrelet (pad with a hole in the middle), this
is bent, and plunged into the vulva, it emerges and the insect flees.
System marvellously adapted to the circumstances, for the female is
ferocious and quite ready to devour her suitor. But is it the ferocity
of the female which has modified the fecundating system, or is it the
system, so lacking in tenderness, which has led the receptress to find
only an enemy in the aspirant who advances horn to the fore? Acts which
produce constant and useful results always seem to us ordered by an
admirable logic; one need only give oneself up to a certain laziness
of mind, to be led quite gently to call them providential and to fall
little by little into the innocent nets of finalism.
Doubtless--and undeniable--there is a general finality, but one must
conceive it as represented entire by the present state of nature.
This will not be a conception of order, but a conception of fact,
and in any case, the means used to attain this fact should in no
way be integrated in the finality itself. None of the procedures of
generation, for example, bears the mark of necessity. It is not the
ferocity of the she-spider which demands the sexual habit; the female
mantis is still more savage, and mantis' method is cavalage. It does
not seem as if anything in nature were ordered in view of some benefit;
causes blindly engender causes; some maintain life, others force it to
progress, others destroy it; we qualify them differently, according to
the dictates of our sensibility, but they are non-qualifiable; they are
movements, and nothing else. The pebble ricochets on the water, or it
doesn't; this has no importance in itself, nothing more will come of it
and nothing less. It is an image of supreme finality: after eight or
ten bounds, life, like the pebble thrown by a child, will fall into the
abyss, and with it all the good and evil, all facts, all ideas, and all
things.
The idea of finality leads one back to the idea of fact, one is no
longer tempted to attempt an explanation of nature. One would try
modestly to reconstruct the chain of causes and, as a great number of
rings will always be lacking, and as the absence of one ring alone
would suffice to unhook the whole reasoning, one will do this in a
piety tempered by scepticism.
The epirus, although a spider, is not an ill-conditioned beast; she is
episcopal, she carries on her back a pretty white cross upside down.
The large ones are the females; the very small ones, the males. Both
hook their webs upon bushes, on shrubs, live without knowing each other
until instinct has spoken. A day comes when the male is restless; the
gnats fail to satisfy him; he leaves, he abandons the home he will
perhaps not see again. He is not, indeed, without misgivings, and fear
is mingled with his desire, for the mistress he seeks is an ogress.
Thus he prepares a way of retreat in case of combat; he stretches a
thread from the female's web to a neighbouring branch, road of entry,
gate of exit. Often, the instant he shows himself with his excited
air, the female epirus leaps on him and eats him without formality.
Is it ferocity? No, stupidity. She also is awaiting the male, but her
attention is distraught between the coming of the caller and the coming
of prey. The web has shaken, she leaps, enlaces, devours. Perhaps
a second male if he attempt the pass, will be gladly received, the
first sacrifice accomplished, perhaps this mistake, if it is one, will
wake all the amorous attention of the distracted female? Ferocity,
stupidity; there is another explanation which I will give later,
apropos the mantis and the green grass-hopper: it is very probable
that the sacrifice of the male, or of a male, is absolutely necessary,
and that it is a sexual rite. The little male approaches; if he is
recognized, and if his coming coincides with the genital state of the
female, she merely behaves like all the rest of her peers, and even
though she be the larger and stronger, she flees; she lets herself,
full of coquetry, slide down a thread; the male imitates the play, he
descends, she mounts, he mounts, the acquaintance is made, they feel
each other, they pat each other, the male fills his pump, the mating
is accomplished. She is rapid, the male stays on guard, ready to flee
at the least movement of his adversary; often he hasn't time. Scarcely
has the fecundation been finished when the ogress turns, leaping, and
devours the suitor on the very spot of his amours. They say that she
does not always wait for the end of the operation, and that preferring
a good meal to a caress, she interrupts the performance with a slap of
her mandibles. When the male has the luck to escape he disappears like
a flash, goes down his thread like greased lightning. The argyronete
uses manœuvres analogous, but even more curious. It is a water spider,
which goes under water in an ingenious small diving-bell, a future
nest. The female having made her diving-bell, the male, not daring to
present himself thinks out the wheeze of making another bell just next
that of the female. Then at a propitious moment he breaks through the
dividing wall and profits by the surprise of his sudden entry. When it
is a matter of not being eaten, all means are the right ones.
The tarantula, whose habits are far from gentle, is not cruel to
her suitor. This monster who spins no web, spins out a long idyllic
courtship. Extended preludes, puerile games, delicate caresses,
lambkins' leapings. Finally the female surrenders fully. The male
places her as he wishes, chooses for her the pose most pleasing to
him, and lies obliquely against her, gently and repeatedly taking the
sperm from his abdomen he insinuates each of his palpes, one after the
other in the swollen vulva of the female. The break-away is sudden,
a jump. Still more tender are the courtships of the leaping spider;
they advance by little rushes, stop, watch, leap on their prey, insect
or fly, or else float at the wind's will on the end of a long hanging
web-thread. When male and female meet, they approach, tap each other
with forefeet and tentacles, separate, reapproach, recommence. After
a thousand salutations, they pose head to head, the male climbs onto
the female, stretches out until he reaches the abdomen. Then he lifts
the extremity of it, applies his palpe to the vulva, and retires. The
same act is begun again several times, the female is all compliance
and offers no insult to her companion. There are certain exceptions to
the method of spiders; the reapers, little balls mounted on immense
legs, act by cavalage. The males have a retractile prong fixed by two
ligaments to the abdomen, the female an oviduct which opens in vulva
and spreads interiorly into a vast pouch, the resting place for the
eggs. The male does not manage this female, a strong objector, save
by seizing her mandibles with his pincers. Overcome by this bite she
submits; the coupling lasts several seconds.
The dragon-fly, gracefully called "la demoiselle," is one of the
finest insects in the world and certainly the most beautiful of those
which fly in our climate; no soft butterfly colour is a match for the
moving shimmer of its supple abdomen, and the bright head-colours as
of steely-blue helmet. Description? It is difficult to find two alike;
one has tawny body and dove-grey abdomen, spotted with yellow, and
black feet, transparent wings with brown borders or nerve-veinings,
or these in black and white; another has a yellow head, brown eyes,
brown corselet veined in green, an abdomen touched with green and
yellow, irised wings; another called "la Vierge" is gilded green, or
blue with green shimmer, and spotless wings; another "la Jouvencelle"
has wings thin to invisibility, is clothed in all shades, metallic
blue, reddish-brown green, iris violet, tawny chrysanthemum, whatever
her fundamental colour she encircles her elegant barrel with rings
of black velvet. Naturalists divide these insects into libellules,
æshnes, agrions; Fabricius disputes with Linnæus; peasants and children
(for grown-ups despise nature) call them "demoiselles," "vierges" and
"jouvencelles."[1] Some fly very high, in the trees, others along the
streams and over pond edges; others over ferns, reeds, broom. I have
passed days in the sun watching them, waiting to see their courtships;
I have seen them, and know that Réaumur has not deceived us. It was
on the surface of a pond among the border flowers, a morning of July,
a flaming morning. The "Vierge," corselet of blue green, almost
invisible wings, fluttered in great numbers, slowly, as if seriously;
the hour of parade had arrived. And everywhere couples formed, rings
of azure hung from the grass blades, trembled on leaves of the
water-lentil, everywhere green arrows and blue arrows played at flight,
and wing-brushing, at joining. The big eyes and strong head of the
libellule give an air of gravity to the brilliancy of this spectacle.
The ejaculatory canal opens at the ninth ring of the abdomen, that is
to say, at the point; the copulating apparatus is fixed at the second
ring, that is, near the neck, and is composed of a penis, of hooks, and
a reservoir: the male bending his long belly first fills the reservoir,
then empties it into the organs of the female. For a long time he
pursues the desired mistress, plays with her, finally seizes her above
the neck with the terminal pincers of his abdomen, then, turning like
a serpent, he bends forward and continues to fly, a beast with four
pairs of wings. In this attitude, the male, sure of himself, with the
air of the hour's indifferent master, chases midges, visits flowers
and the axilla of plants where the midges sleep, nabs them with his
feet and puts them into his mouth. Finally the female accedes, bends
downward her flexible abdomen and makes its orifice coincide with the
male's pectoral penis: the two beastlets are but one splendid ring with
a double cup, a ring trembling with life and with fire.
No gesture of love can be conceived more charming than that of the
female slowly bending back her blue body, going half way toward her
lover, who erect on his forefeet bears, with taut muscles, the full
weight of the movement. It is so pure, so immaterial, one would say
that two ideas joined in the limpidity of ineluctable thought.
[1] In America we have, so far as I know, only the terms "dragon
fly" and "darning-needle," and for the larger ones "devil's
darning-needle."--E. P.