Yet one would think that this was the very moment at which to make the most of his strong points. Why not declare his flame in a fond couplet, instead of standing there, scratching his feet? Not a bit of it. He remains silent in front of the coveted bride, herself impassive.
The interview, a mere exchange of greetings [[221]]between friends of different sexes, does not last long. What do they say to each other, forehead to forehead? Not much, apparently, for soon they separate with nothing further; and each goes his way where he pleases.
Next day, the same two meet again. This time, the song, though still very brief, is in a louder key than on the day before, while being still very far from the burst of sound to which the Decticus will give utterance long before the pairing. For the rest, it is a repetition of what I saw yesterday: mutual caresses with the antennæ, which limply pat the well-rounded sides.
The male does not seem greatly enraptured. He again nibbles his foot and seems to be reflecting. Alluring though the enterprise may be, it is perhaps not unattended with danger. Can there be a nuptial tragedy here, similar to that which the Praying Mantis has shown us? Can the business be exceptionally grave? Have patience and you shall see. For the moment, nothing more happens.
A few days later, a little light is thrown upon the subject. The male is underneath, lying flat on the sand and towered over by [[222]]his powerful spouse, who, with her sabre exposed, standing high on her hind-legs, overwhelms him with her embrace. No, indeed: in this posture the poor Decticus has nothing of the victor about him! The other, brutally, without respecting the musical-box, is forcing open his wing-cases and nibbling his flesh just where the belly begins.
Which of the two takes the initiative here? Have not the parts been reversed? She who is usually provoked is now the provoker, employing rude caresses capable of carrying off the morsel touched. She has not yielded to him; she has thrust herself upon him, disturbingly, imperiously. He, lying flat on the ground, quivers and starts, seems trying to resist. What outrageous thing is about to happen? I shall not know to-day. The floored male releases himself and runs away.
But this time, at last, we have it. Master Decticus is on the ground, tumbled over on his back. Hoisted to the full height of her shanks, the other, holding her sabre almost perpendicular, covers her prostrate mate from a distance. The two ventral extremities curve into a hook, seek each other, meet; and soon from the male’s convulsive loins there [[223]]is seen to issue, in painful labour, something monstrous and unheard-of, as though the creature were expelling its entrails in a lump.
It is an opalescent bag, similar in size and colour to a mistletoe-berry, a bag with four pockets marked off by faint grooves, two larger ones above and two smaller ones below. In certain cases the number of cells increases and the whole assumes the appearance of a packet of eggs such as Helix aspersa, the Common Snail, lays in the ground.
The strange concern remains hanging from the lower end of the sabre of the future mother, who solemnly retires with the extraordinary wallet, the spermatophore, as the physiologists call it, the source of life for the ovules, in other words the cruet which will now in due course transmit to the proper place the necessary complement for the evolution of the germs.
A capsule of this kind is a rare, an infinitely rare thing in the world of to-day. So far as I know, the Cephalopods[5] and the Scolopendras[6] are, in our time, the only [[224]]other animals that make use of the queer apparatus. Now Octopuses and Millepedes date back to the earliest ages. The Decticus, another representative of the old world, seems to tell us that what is a curious exception now might well have been a more or less general rule originally, all the more so as we shall come upon similar incidents in the case of the other Grasshoppers.