THE SEXUAL PARADE
_Universality of the caress, of amorous
preludes.--Their rôle in fecundation.--Sexual
games of birds.--How cantharides caress.--Males'
combats.--Pretended combats of birds.--Dance of the
tetras.--Gardener bird.--His country house.--His
taste for flowers.--Reflections on the origin
of his art.--Combats of crickets.--Parade of
butterflies.--Sexual sense of orientation.--The
great-peacock moth.--Animals' submission to orders of
Nature.--Transmutation of physical values.--Rutting
calendar._
One has convinced oneself in the preceding chapters that the games of
love, preludes, caresses, combats are in no way peculiar to the human
race. On nearly all rungs of the animal ladder, or rather on all the
branches of the animal fan, the male is the same, the female is the
same. It is always the equation given in the intimate mechanism of
union of animalcule and ovule: a fortress toward which _amans volat
currit ac lætatur_. The whole passage of the _Imitatio_ (L. III, chap.
iv, 4) is a marvellous psychological presentation of love in nature,
of sexual attraction as it is felt throughout the whole series of
creatures. The besieger must enter the fortress; he uses violence,
sometimes gentle violence; more often trickery, the caress.
Caress, charming movements, grace, tenderness, we do all these things
of necessity, not because we are men, but because we are animals.
Their aim is to liven the sensibilities, to dispose the organism to
accomplish with joy its supreme function. They are, very probably,
agreeable to the individual and they are perceived as pleasure only
because they are useful to the species. This character of necessity is
naturally more apparent in animals than in man. In animals the caress
has fixed forms, of which the kiss, however, gives a good example; the
caress is an integral part of the cavalage. A prelude, but a prelude
which can not be omitted without compromising the essential part of
the drama. It happens, however, that man, able to overexcite himself
cerebrally, may abridge, or even neglect the prologue to coition: this
is also noted in certain domestic mammifers, the bull and stallion. The
mere sight or smell of the other sex is doubtless enough to produce a
state permitting immediate union. This is not the case with dogs, who
are still more domestic, the two sexes give themselves up to play, to
explorations, they demand each other's consent, courtship continues,
sometimes the male, despite his condition, retreats; more often the
female lowers the draw-bridge of her tail, and closes the fortress. One
knows the provocations of birds. M. Mantegazza has agreeably recounted
the sexual play of two vultures, the female shut in the carcass of an
almost devoured horse, interrupted her pecking of carrion, to groan
deeply, turning her head to look up into the air. A male vulture soared
above the larder, replying to the groans of the female. However, when
the overexcited male descended toward the supposedly willing vulturess,
she retreated into the carcass, and after a short dispute she made him
understand that the time was not yet ripe, and sent him off. After
which the groans recommenced; the female seemed annoyed; she mounted
the cage of bone, swelling her wings, lifting her tail, cooing. The
union finally took place in a great commotion of ruffled feathers and
shaken bones.
The same author has precisely noted the complicated preludes indulged
in by two sparrows. I give the résumé, graphically: A troop of sparrows
on the roof in the morning; calm, they make their toilet. Arrives a
large male who emits a violent cry; one of the females replies at once,
not by a cry but by an act: she leaves the group. The male joins her,
she flies to a neighbouring roof; there follows a long chatter beak to
beak. New flight; the male rests in the sun, then rejoins the minx. The
assaults begin, the male is repulsed. The female moves off, in little
hops. The edge of the roof stops the flight, she profits by this excuse
and surrenders.
But it is the prodigious insect whom one must interrogate. One knows
the cantharides, these beautiful coleoptera on whom pharmacy has
inflicted so wicked a reputation. The female gnaws her oak leaf, the
male arrives, mounts her back, enlaces her with his hind feet. Then
with his stretched abdomen he flagellates the female alternately to
right and left with frantic speed. At the same time he massages her,
lashes her neck furiously with his front feet, all his body shakes and
vibrates. The female remains passive, awaiting the calm. It comes.
Without letting go the male stretches out his forelegs in a cross,
unbends a little, wagging from head and corselet. The female starts
eating again. The calm is short; the male's follies recommence. Then
there is another manœuvre, with the fold of his legs and tarses, he
seizes the female's antennæ, forces her to lift her head, at the same
time redoubling the lashing of her flanks. New pose; new start of the
flagellation: finally the female opens. The coupling lasts a day and a
night, after which the male falls, but remains knotted to the female
who drags him from leaf to leaf, the penis attached to her organs.
Sometimes he also takes a mouthful here and there; when he drops off it
is to die. The female lays the eggs and dies in her turn. The cerocome,
an insect kin to the cantharide, has analogous habits, but the female
is even colder, and the male is obliged to tap more than one before
getting an answer. In vain he beats the sides of his chosen companion
with his paws, she remains insensible, inert. This action, moreover,
has the full appearance of having passed to a state of mania in the
male muscles, so much so that, in default of females, males mount and
pummel each other. As soon as a male is charged by another male he
takes the female attitude and remains quiet; one sees pyramids of three
or four males; in which case the top one is the only one wildly waving
his feet; the others remain immobile, as if their position of mounts
transformed them into passive animals: probably because their muscles
are pinned down. (For these two observations see Fabre, "_Souvenirs_,"
vol. II. _Cérocomes, mylabres et zonitis_.)
It is rare for a female to assist the male in his work, but there
remains the obstacle of the other males. Contrary to what one might
think, there is no relation between the male's social character and
his amorous character. Ferocious animals show themselves at the moment
of love-making much more placid than gentle or even timid animals.
The scary rabbit is an impetuous, tyrannous and jealous lover. If the
female does not accede to his first desire, he rages. She is, moreover,
very lascivious and gestation in no way interrupts her amours. The
hare, who does not pass for audacious, is an ardent and heady lover; he
fights furiously with his peers for the possession of a female. They
are animals very well equipped for love, the penis greatly developed,
clitoris almost as large. The males make real voyages, run for entire
nights in search of the doe-hare who is sedentary: like the doe-rabbit,
she never refuses, even when pregnant.
Martins, polecats, sables, rats fight violently during the rutting
season. Rats accompany their fights with sharp cries. Stags and
wildboars, and a great number of other species fight to the death for
the possession of females; a practice not unknown to humanity. Even
heavy tortoises feel exasperation from love; the defeated male is
tilted onto his back.
Finer, destined perhaps for a superior and charming civilization, the
birds like combat; sometimes the duel is serious, as in gallinaceæ,
cock-fights, often it is a courtesy, a mimicry. The female of
the rock-cock of Brazil is tawny and without beauty, the male is
yellow-orange, with crest bordered in deep red, the long wing feathers
and tail feathers are red-brown. One sees the females ranged in a
circle as a crowd about jugglers, the males are strutting, cutting
capers, moving their colour-shot feathers, getting themselves admired
and desired. From time to time a female admits that she is moved, a
couple is formed. But the tetras, heather-cocks of North America, have
still more curious customs. Their fights have become exactly what they
have with us, that is, dances. It is no longer the tourney, it is
the tour-de-valse. What completes the proof that these parades are a
survival, a transformation, is that the males, being amused by them,
perform them not only before but after coupling. They even practice
them for diversion while the females are sitting on the eggs, absorbed
in maternal duty. Travellers thus describe the tetras' dance (Milton
and Cheaddle, "Atlantic to Pacific," p. 171 of the French translation):
"They gather, twenty or thirty in a chosen place, and begin to dance
like mad. Opening their wings, they draw together their feet, like men
doing the _danse du sac_. Then they advance toward each other, do a
waltz turn, pass to a second partner, and so on. This contre-danse of
prairie chickens is very amusing. They become so absorbed in it that
one can approach quite near."
Birds of Australia and New Guinea[1] make love with a charming
ceremony. To attract his mistress the male makes a veritable
country-house, or, if he is less skilful, a rustic bower of greenery.
He plants rushes, green sprigs, for he is small, about the size of a
blackbird; he bends them into a vault, often a metre long. He strews
the floor with leaves, flowers, red fruits, white bits of bone, bright
pebbles, bits of metal, jewels stolen in the neighbourhood. They say
that when Australians miss a ring or a pair of scissors, they search
these green tents. Our magpie shows a certain taste for bright objects:
people tell tales about him. The "gardener-bird" of New Guinea is
still more ingenious, to such a degree that his work is mistaken for
human work and people are deceived thereby. With his beak and claws he
manages as well and better than peasants, often showing a decorative
taste which they lack. People search for the "origin of art": there
you have it, in the sexual game of a bird. Our æsthetic manifestations
are but a development of this same instinct to please which, in one
specie over-excites the male, in another moves the female. If there is
a surplus it will be spent aimlessly, for pure pleasure: that is human
art; its origin is that of the art of birds and insects.
The _Grande Encyclopédie_ has given a picture of the gardener-bird's
pleasure house. He is called in most scholarly parlance the Amblyornis
inornata, because he is lacking in personal beauty. One would take
his house for the work of some intelligent delicate pygmy. We find
the description of it, after the Italian traveller M. O. Beccari[2]
"In crossing a magnificent forest M. Beccari found himself suddenly
in the presence of a little conical cabin, in front of which was a
lawn strewn with flowers; he at once recognized the sort of hut which
M. Bruijn's huntsmen had described to him as the work of a dark bird
somewhat larger than a blackbird. He made a very exact sketch of it,
and verifying the native's tales by his own observation, he found
out how the bird makes this building which is not so much a nest
as a pleasure house. The amblyornis chooses a little clearing with
unbroken lawn and a small tree in the middle. Around this tree or bush
which serves as axis, the bird places a little moss, then he plants
slantwise the branches of a plant which will continue to grow for
some time; juxtaposition of branches form the inclined walls of the
hut. On one side they are left open to make a doorway, before which
is the garden whose elements are gathered with difficulty, tuft by
tuft, at some distance. After having carefully cleaned the lawn, the
amblyornis sows it with flowers and fruits which he collects in the
neighbourhood, and which he renews from time to time." This primitive
gardener belongs to the bird of paradise family, remarkable for
the beauty of their plumage. It seems that not being able to dress
himself, he has exteriorized his instinct. According to travellers,
these cabins are true houses of rendezvous, the country-boxes of the
seventeenth century, the "follies" of the XVIIIth. The gallant bird
ornaments it with everything that might please the invited female; if
she is satisfied, it is the abode of love, after having been that of
declarations. I do not know whether these oddities have been given the
importance which they should have been, in the history of birds and of
humanity. The scholar, the only person knowing such details, usually
fails utterly to understand them. One savant whom I read, thinks of
the thieving magpie, and adds, these traits which are common to them
ally them closely to birds of paradise and corvida. Doubtless, but that
is not very important. The grave fact is the gathering of the first
flower. The useful fact explains animality; the useless fact explains
man. Now, it is of capital importance to show that the useless fact is
not peculiar to man alone.
Crickets also have courting fights, but perhaps for a different reason:
the feebleness of their offensive weapons, and the solidity of their
armour. There is, however, a winner and loser. The loser decamps, the
conqueror sings. Then he shines himself, stamps, seems nervous. Fabre
says that emotion often renders him mute; his elytra (wing-shells)
shake without giving a sound. The female cricket, witness of the duel,
runs to hide under a leaf as soon as it is over. "She draws back the
curtain a little, and looks out, and wants to be seen." After this
play, she shows herself completely, the cricket rushes forward, makes
a half-turn, rears up and slides under her belly. The work finished,
he gets away as fast as possible, for we are before an enigmatic
orthopter, the female is quite ready to eat him. It is the male's song
which attracts the female cricket. When she hears it, she listens,
takes her bearings, obeys the call. It is the same with cicadas, even
though the two sexes usually live side by side. By imitating the sound
of the male, one can deceive the females and make them come to one.
Sometimes sight, sometimes smell guides the male. Many hymenoptera,
furnished with a powerful visual organ keep watch for the females,
spying the vicinity. Thus also many day butterflies. When the male
notices a female, he pursues, but in order to get in front of her,
to be seen, and he seems to tempt her with slow waving of his wings.
This display lasts often quite a long time. Finally their antennæ
touch, their wings stroke each other, and they fly off in company. The
coupling often takes place in the air; thus among pierides. In certain
species, bombyx for example, the females are heavy and even aptera, the
male who is in contrast lively, fecundates several, going from one to
the other, which is doubtless what gives butterflies their reputation
for inconstancy. They live too short a time to deserve it: many born
in the morning do not see the next day's sun. One might rather make
them a symbol for pure thought. There are some who do not eat, and
among those who do not eat there are some whom nature has vowed to
virginity. Hermaphrodites of a singular sort, male on the right side,
female on the left, they seem to be two sexual halves welded together
along the medial line. The organs whose centre is cut by this line are
but demi-organs good for nothing save the entertainment of observers.
Hybrid butterflies, produced by crossing of two species, are not very
rare; they also are incapable of reproduction.
The coupling of day butterflies lasts only a few minutes, among night
butterflies it is often prolonged for a day and a night, as in sphinx,
phalenes, noctuelles. If it is a reward, it is due to their long
courageous voyages in quest of the female whom they have divined. The
great-peacock moth covers several leagues of country in the attempt to
satisfy his desire. Blanchard tells of a naturalist who having caught
a female bombyx and put her in his pocket, returned home escorted by
a cloud of over 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 bora 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. One would say that at this point they should have used another
sense, perhaps sight, despite their being crepuscular creatures, or
that the cage bothered them. Perhaps also it is the custom for the
female to come and play before them? It is, in any case, evident that
sense of smell plays an important rôle; the mystery would not be less
great if one supposed the bringing into play of a special sense, that
of sexual orientation. Fabre has obtained equal success with the
female of a very rare butterfly, the oak bombyx, or banded minime: in
one morning sixty males arrived, turning about the prisoner. One has
observed analogous if not identical things in certain serpents, in
mammifera: everyone has seen dogs in the country, drawn by a female in
heat, coming from a considerable distance, nearly a league, without
one's being able to say how their organism had got the news.
Explanations are vain in these matters. They divert the curiosity
without satisfying the reason. What one sees clearly is a necessity:
the act must be accomplished, to this end, all obstacles, whatever
they are, will be overcome. Neither distance, nor the difficulty
of the voyage, nor the danger of the approach can drive back the
instinct. In man, who has sometimes the power to escape the sexual
commandments, disobedience may have happy results. Chastity, as a
transmuter, may change unused sexual energy into intellectual or social
energy; in animals this transmutation of physical values is impossible.
The compass needle remains in one immutable position, obedience is
unescapable. That is why there is so deep a rumble in nature when the
spring orders are posted. Vegetable flowers are not the only ones to
open: sexes of flesh also flower. Birds, fish take on new and more
vivid colours. There are songs, plays, pilgrimages. Salmon who live
quietly at the river-mouths, must gather, depart, climb the streams,
pass weirs, scrabble against rocks which form the dams and cataracts,
wear themselves out leaping as arrows against all human and natural
obstacles. Males and females arrive worn out at the end of their
journey, the _frayère_ of fine sand where they are to lay their eggs,
and the males heroically to spend the milt distilled from their blood.
Spring is not the only rutting season. Love's calendar covers the
year. In winter, wolves and foxes; in spring, the birds and fish;
in summer, insects and many mammals; in autumn the deer. Winter
is often the season chosen by polar animals; the sable couples in
January; the ermine in March; the glutton, at the beginning and end
of winter. Domestic animals have often several seasons; for the dog,
cat and house-birds, spring and autumn. One finds young otters at any
time. Most insects die after mating; but not all hemiptera, nor the
queen bee, nor certain coleoptera, nor certain flies. The stag and
the stallion empty themselves, but not the ram, nor the bull nor the
he-goat. The duration of pregnancy in placentaires seems to have some
relation to the size of the animal; mare, eleven to twelve months;
ass, twelve months and a half; cow, doe, nine months; sheep, goat,
wolf, vixen, five months; sow, four months; bitch, two months; cat, six
weeks; rabbit, one month.
There are oddities: fecundated in August, the roe is not delivered
until seven and a half months later, the embryo remaining a long time
stationary, and waiting for the spring to start again. In a she-bat
ovulation does not take place until the end of winter, although she has
received the male in the autumn: females caught during hibernation have
the vagina swollen with inert sperm which does not act until the spring
waking.
[1] One has the unpronounceable name, savants designating it by the
jumble of letters: Ptilinorhynches. The other is called the "gardener."
[2] The title of his study is curious "Les Cabanes et les jardins de
l'Amblyornis." (Annales du Musée d'histoire naturelle de Gênes, 1876).