The Courtship of the Cuttle-fish—The Sumptuous Cradle of the Argonaut—The Love-darts of the Snail—Hermaphrodites and the Dangers of Self-fertilization—Oysters and Beauty—Sex reduced to its Lowest Terms—Parthenogenesis and Virgin Birth—The Story of the Hive-bee—The Departure of the Queen—The New Queen and her Marriage-flight—The Celebration of the Nuptials and its Surprising Sequel—The Widowed Queen turns Executioner—The Queen as Mother—The Queen’s Daughters—Nursemaids’ Duties—Change of Work—The Drones and their Career—Food and Sex—The Bumble-bee and its Life-story. That the psychical emotions sway the goad of sexual instincts in the higher animals there can be no doubt; and there can be as little uncertainty that this stimulating and controlling factor gradually loses force as we descend in the scale of animal life. Just where it ceases it is impossible to say. A vague, nebulous intelligence doubtless persists after these more subtle emotions have ceased, and this, probably, in turn, gives place to purely instinctive behaviour. These various phases of the sexual problem grade one into the other. But they are all parts of a continuous sequence, beginning, apparently, in relatively simple responses to chemical interactions of the kind known as chemotaxis and ending with the passion 266which, in the human race, may become a consuming fire, purifying and ennobling, or exactly the reverse—according to the nature of the inflammable material. That is to say, in the phenomena of sex one sees emotions in the making. The begetting of children becomes the underlying goal of life, the hidden heart and soul of animated nature.
This being so, one cannot but feel surprised at the discovery that, in certain groups of the animal kingdom one meets with a strange exception to this great rule. And this is furnished by the phenomenon of parthenogenesis, wherein sexual desire has been dethroned. Offspring result from Virgin births: parental care is non-existent. This anomalous condition must be regarded as an offshoot of the normal course of events traced in these pages, and not as a primitive condition. This interpretation seems to be shown clearly enough in that almost every case where parthenogenesis obtains, males, sooner or later, make their appearance—periodically or sporadically. Every stage between the normal, seasonal appearance of males and their entire suppression can be traced, and an analysis of these cases demonstrates unequivocally the uplifting character of the bi-sexual state, if only by the fact that the uni-sexual condition makes no demands on the parent, and does nothing to foster the growth of the higher emotions.
No attempt need now be made to discover the origin of parthenogenesis. Let it be assumed, for the moment, that it is a condition derived from hermaphroditism, wherein each individual is mon?cious or bi-sexual. In all di?cious or uni-sexual animals, that is to say, where the individuals composing the species are either male or 267female, each contains a leaven of the opposite sex, even when adult. It is still a moot point whether, in the earlier stages of development, chance decides whether the sex shall be male or female, or, at any rate, whether the growing body is potentially male or female, till the die is cast by some as yet undiscovered factor; or whether this is determined from the very beginning of germinal life. In many of the lower animals, as among the Mollusca and some of the insects, each individual is as much male as female, and it is from a condition such as this that parthenogenesis probably had its rise.
These two groups are selected here because they, more than any others in like case, afford some extremely interesting gradations in this strange phenomena of what is to be regarded as the degeneration of sexual individuality, for each contains some members wherein the sexes are separate, and in these cases sexual desire is present in varying degrees. In some it is associated with very remarkable phenomena.
Among the Mollusca the Octopuses afford one of the most striking illustrations of such phenomena. In these creatures one of the sucker-bearing arms is more or less completely transformed to subserve the ends of sexual congress. Without entering into the technical details of the changes, it will suffice to remark that it is modified in such a way as to allow the transference of the spermatozoa from the body cavity wherein they are formed, to the arm near, or at, the tip of which they are stored in a special sac or “spermatophore,” and such modified arms are said to be “hectocotylized.” This extraordinary modification attains its maximum development in the celebrated Argonaut, and one or two of the more typical Octopuses. In the Argonaut this arm does not make its 268appearance until sexual maturity has been attained, when a large more or less globular swelling appears, enclosing the third arm of the left side, coiled upon itself. Having attained its full development the sac bursts and releases the arm. The folds which formed the sac now bend back to form a new receptacle into which the spermatophore is passed. But this is not all. The tip of the newly released arm bears another sac, which sooner or later bursts, forming a long, slender penis, and along the central tube of this the spermatozoa pass from the spermatophore to their destination. Their conveyance thereto forms the last and most amazing feature of this strange history. The male, eager with pent-up desire, and glowing with all the colours of the rainbow, gradually approaches the female of his choice, who apparently awaits him with no little palpitation, and then, with a sudden rush flings himself upon her, and apparently thrusts the penis into her mantle cavity, when at once the whole arm breaks off from his body and remains attached to her person, retaining its vitality, strange as it may seem, for some considerable time, during which, no doubt, the spermatozoa are slowly making their way out of the spermatophore and along the channel prepared for their reception. That the Cuttle-fish are polyandrous there seems to be little room for doubt, inasmuch as no less than four such detached arms have been found beneath the mantle of one female. With the majority of the Cuttle-fish and Octopus tribe the arm is not detached, but when it is so, and this occurs in all the species belonging to three different genera, a new arm is grown.
Plate 41.
 
SOME REMARKABLE METHODS OF “COURTSHIP.”
1. The female Argonaut and her egg-casket.
2 and 3. The male Argonaut and his “hectocotylized” arm.
4. A Cuttle-fish (Ocyh?e catenulata ♂), showing the “hectocotylized” arm described in the text, and the “spermatophore” at the base of the long filament.
[Face page 268.
As a rule, among these animals the males are smaller than the females. In the case of the Argonaut there is a yet more striking difference, for the female possesses a very beautiful shell in which she carries her eggs. This 269remarkable cradle, translucent and beautifully sculptured, she attaches to her person by means of a pair of arms which are expanded to form great lobes, almost but not quite completely covering the shell. The earlier naturalists believed that this shell served as a boat, and that the lobated arms were spread as sails! This supposed fact naturally caught the fancy of the poets, who seized upon it to point a moral and adorn a tale. Byron celebrated these imaginary feats of seamanship in the familiar lines:
The tender Nautilus who steers his prow,
The sea-born sailor of his shell-canoe.
and Pope bids us:
Learn of the little Nautilus to sail,
Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.
Sir Richard Owen years ago, however, dispelled these pretty fancies, though the facts are surely as wonderful as the fables they have replaced. They afford, too, one of the most striking secondary sexual characters to be met with among the Mollusca; nowhere else, indeed, among the members of this group is so strange a cradle to be met with.
But little, unfortunately, is known of the behaviour of these animals, which are by far the most active of the Mollusca, and which also display no small degree of intelligence. Their eyes, which are of great size and complex structure, are undoubtedly far more effective organs of vision than are possessed by any other Molluscs. It is possible, therefore, that the sexes discover one another by sight; and it is certain that something in the nature270 of a “Courtship” takes place. The majority of the species, also, possess the most extraordinary powers of changing their coloration, especially during moments of great excitement. The magnificence of the hues which succeed one another, like a series of variegated blushes suffusing the whole body, may be one of the weapons in the armoury of Cuttle-fish love-making. In how far the “courtship” of the Cuttle-fish resembles that of terrestrial animals, however, is a matter on which at present nothing is really known. That even the comparatively sedentary species, like the Octopus, seize upon and hold territory is very improbable, for there is no need of such landed estates, inasmuch as the offspring are not tended and fed by the parents—this would indeed be a laborious task in the case of some of the “Squids” which lay between thirty thousand and forty thousand eggs! Having regard to the fact that the records of the reproductive habits of the Octopus tribe date back to the time of Aristotle, more than two thousand two hundred years ago—for he first drew attention to the hectocotylized arm—it is curious that so little has been gleaned during this vast space of time.
There are facts in regard to the sexual relationships of some of the Snails that are in nowise less remarkable than those just related of the Octopus tribe. Unlike the Octopuses, the Snails are hermaphrodite, nevertheless sexual congress takes place as with unisexual species: the eggs of the one being fertilized by the spermatozoa of the other. During this process the orgasm of the sexual act appears to be brought about by stabbing one another by means of a little dart formed of carbonate of lime, the dart burying itself in the flesh and apparently promoting a pleasurable, tingling sensation in the course271 of its journey. Speedily, no doubt, it becomes absorbed, the material being then available for the formation of a new dart.
This remarkable instrument, which is known as a “Love-dart,” or Spiculum amoris, assumes a different form in each species in which it occurs. In some the shaft is ridged like a bayonet, as in the case of the Garden Snail, in others the form assumed is that of an awl. These darts are formed within a special receptacle, or “dart-sac,” but so far no explanation as to the origin of these remarkable structures has even been hinted at. They do not seem to have been derived by the modification of some pre-existing organ serving a different function, as wings, for example, are derived from walking limbs, or as lungs are derived from air-sacs. Their origin is as mysterious as their use: for they are not found in all Snails, though they occur in one or two Slugs—which are degenerate Snails. But no other Molluscs save the Snails and one or two of their immediate allies are so armed.
The hermaphrodite conditions of these animals, as with other Mollusca in like case, present some knotty points for consideration, and especially in regard to the problem of sex-attraction. Where each individual is as much male as female, which is the dominating factor in desire, the maleness or the femaleness? Though each individual contains both ova and sperm cells, probably these ripen at different times, to avoid danger of self-fertilization. In this case the sex impulses are on the same footing as in the case of animals wherein the sexes are not thus combined. That is to say, the individual which is for the moment only potentially male mates with another for the moment only potentially272 female. But this being so, how does each discover the condition of the other?
Many of the Snails, like Helix nemoralis, are gaily coloured. Are these hues, these bands of black and yellow, the product of “sexual selection”—the outcome of a process of selection from among the most conspicuously coloured individuals as postulated by the Darwinian theory of Sexual Selection? If so, then this choice must be regarded as a periodic recurrence coinciding with the period during which the individual is dominated by its female attributes. In due course it becomes, for the time, a male, and may find itself rejected, owing to a lack of intensity in its coloration, or, on the other hand, it may vanquish a rival by its very splendour. Each, in short, would help materially in this process of beautification. If the choice of mating for it is this rather than a choice of mates—proceeds on these lines, the bright coloration of the members of this species becomes easy to understand. But does it? It is more than doubtful whether the eyes of Snails are sufficiently good to distinguish the coloration of their neighbours’ shells, or for the matter of that of their own, for their eyes being carried on long mobile stalks, they should have no difficulty in contemplating their own charms. And what of Snails of more sober hues? It seems highly probable that here, as in so many cases, scent is the selecting factor, and the coloration is an “accidental” feature. That the colour of the shell plays no such part as that just postulated may be gathered from the evidence afforded by many marine species, whose shells, though conspicuously marked, are, during life, completely enveloped and concealed by the all-investing, fleshy mantle. In like manner the273 exquisite beauty in the form and sculpturing of the shell which so many species exhibit, are characters which cannot be regarded as due to sexual selection.
As touching the danger of self-fertilization to which reference has been made. That this is real is shown by the fact that the ova and spermatozoa are rarely ripe in one individual at the same time. However, among the pulmonata, or air-breathing gastropods, it seems to have been established that self-fertilization can, and does, occur. That in some species, at any rate, where cross-fertilization, for some reason, is impossible, the individual thus isolated can store up its own spermatozoa to be used in fertilizing its own eggs. But the fact that this rarely happens is testimony enough that such occurrences are inimical to well-being.
The Lamellibranch, or bivalve Mollusca, e.g., Oyster, Mussel, and Cockle, afford valuable evidence as to excrescences and extravagances of growth which appeal to our eyes as ornamental, and therefore likely to be due to the influence of sexual selection. And this because such ornamentation is a very conspicuous feature among these animals. Yet, save in a few cases, locomotion is impossible, and sight is wanting. Light-distinguishing organs, and therefore eyes, are possessed by some, but in no case probably are they strong enough to appreciate form. Even if they did, such revelations of beauty would play no part in mate selection from among the most ornamental; for these creatures are commonly fixed throughout life in one position, often, indeed, buried in mud or sand. Some move laboriously: a few, like the Cockles and Pectens, swim by rapidly opening and closing the shell. The Pectens are brilliantly coloured, not only as regards the shell, which is also beautifully sculptured, 274but the foot also is of a vivid scarlet, and the Pecten have numerous minute eyes. But the Cockles and Mussels possess like attributes as to colour and sculpture, yet they are blind. More to the point is the fact that these animals do not mate after the fashion of higher animals, but the males, where the sexes are distinct, discharge immense quantities of spermatozoa into the water, and these find their way to the ova of the female through the action of the inhalent currents set up by the animal for the purpose of drawing in fresh supplies of water containing food and oxygen. There are no “secondary sexual characters,” that is to say, that even where the sexes are separate, and many, like the Oysters, are hermaphrodite, they are externally indistinguishable. Nevertheless, many, as has been already remarked, have shells of great beauty. As, for example, the giant Tridacna and the strangely spinous valves of the “Thorny Oysters” (Spondylid?).
The fact that the Lamellibranch, or bivalve molluscs, are far less numerous in point of species than the univalve tribes is accounted for by the fact that in the first place they are of necessity aquatic, and in the second their means of locomotion is extremely limited. Some few species swim spasmodically: some crawl: many are incapable of movement when once the motile larva settles down and the shell-bearing adult stage is attained. Such species can extend their range only by means of larval wanderings. Enormous numbers, millions, of young have to be produced and set adrift each year by every adult in the community, and yet but a few of each brood can ever attain to maturity. Life, for such species, must be a dull, monotonous business: the only opportunity for excitement is that which is preliminary to being eaten275, and the only purpose in life is to be eaten. But happily Oysters don’t think. They and their kind are simply semi-conscious living things, responding mechanically to stimuli. Any approach, then, to beauty, either of form or coloration, or both, must be regarded as due to innate, inherent changes in the germ-plasm affecting the parts so made conspicuous: the only form of selection to which such “ornaments” can be subjected is Natural Selection. If, and when, such ornaments penalize their possessor either by their cumbrousness or their conspicuous characters, or by increasing the difficulty of feeding or distributing offspring, then the further development of such excrescences is checked by the death of all individuals which have passed the bounds of endurance in this respect.
Sex, and all that appertains thereto, in short, is in these creatures reduced to its lowest terms. There are not wanting, to-day, both men and women, who affect to believe that all would be well for the human race could a similar slowing-down, or strangulation, of the sexual instincts be brought about. Such blind leaders might profitably contemplate the Oyster: but such contemplation, to be profitable, requires intelligence of a higher order than these protagonists of folly appear to possess.
In justice to Darwin it should be remarked that he himself fully realized, and carefully points out, the inconceivability of the application of the Sexual Selection theory to the Mollusca. In commenting on the beauty of colour and shape which many species display, he remarks: “The colours do not appear in most cases, to be of any use as a protection; they are probably the direct result, as in the lowest classes, of the nature of the 276tissues1: the patterns and the sculpture of the shell depending on the manner of growth.” Just so: and this is surely the fundamental explanation of ornament, using this term in its widest sense, everywhere in the Animal Kingdom. The peculiarities and eccentricities of behaviour, which occur among the higher groups, act as “aphrodisiacs” to hasten reproduction because this confers an advantage, the earliest to produce offspring—so soon as the conditions for their nurture are favourable—having the best chance of survival. Premature sexual activity is checked by the death of the offspring.
1 Italics mine.
It has been contended that the hermaphrodite condition represents the primitive mode of reproduction among the multicellular animals—that is to say, all animals above the level of those whose bodies are composed of but a single cell, or particle, of protoplasm—but this view is probably erroneous, and the hermaphrodite state must be regarded as a secondary condition, a later innovation.
More remarkable are the facts concerned with that singular form of reproduction known as parthenogenesis, or the production of offspring by virgin females. This is undoubtedly a degenerate sexual condition occurring as a normal mode of reproduction, among the microscopic “Rotifers,” e.g. the “Wheel-animalcule,” Crustacea, and Insects, and in varying degrees of intensity.
The most familiar instances of Parthenogenesis are furnished by the Hymenoptera, and notably by the Bees and the Aphides.
There are certain cases among the Rotifers where no males have ever been found, and it is possible that they 277have become entirely suppressed, but in every other case the periodical advent of males is an absolute essential for the continuation of the race. Perhaps the least degenerate of these types are the Bees, wherein we meet with well-developed, highly-organized males and females, which, in their sexual relationships, are perfectly normal. But in the fulfilment of the mating instincts in these insects, a most amazing sequence of events is revealed such as are without parallel in the rest of the Animal Kingdom. The story has been charmingly told already by Maeterlinck, in his delightful “Life of the Bee,” and it has been told again by Tickner Edwardes, with less of poetry, perhaps, but still fascinatingly: and it must be told again now, but in a condensed fashion.
Briefly, a community of hive-bees harbours both male and female individuals only for a very short space. During the greater part of the year it consists only of a vast concourse of infertile females, the daughters of one mother; the “queen” of the hive. The males of that hive are the brothers, not the fathers, of the workers, as some have supposed, and their sojourn there is brief. To gain a clear idea of the facts in regard to the life-history of these insects it is necessary to trace some of the incidents which lead up to the manner in which the population of the hive is regulated, and its continuance ensured. These may well begin with the time when the number of the inhabitants consonant with the well-being of the hive has reached its limit. This occurs during the early part of June, when the queen leaves the hive, accompanied by several thousands of her daughters; they settle at some distance from their late abode in a “swarm” for the purpose of founding a new colony. Here we may leave them. The house just vacated is, however, not entirely deserted.278 A few of the inhabitants, the infertile sexless workers, degenerate females—degenerate so far as the power of reproduction is concerned at any rate—are left behind, and there remain also in their cradles a variable number of unhatched queens, and drones or males. One of these potential queens and the males now speedily emerge, and for a day or two remain within the seclusion of the hive, feeding upon the honey stored in the combs.
The males are the first to leave, making daily excursions abroad in the search for mates. They display in this a very leisurely behaviour, rising late and not venturing out till the day is well aired. Returning early in the afternoon with sharpened appetites, they feed to repletion and soon fall asleep.
In about three days, however, the young queen ventures abroad, timidly at first, to stretch her wings in the sunshine. She is preparing for the great moment of her life, the nuptial flight. So far, though drones may swarm on every side of her, no sign of recognition is given, nor do the males evince any consciousness of her presence. She behaves warily and demurely throughout. Her first excursions abroad are very brief; they are not so much trial flights, apparently, as efforts to locate the exact position of the hive in relation to the outer world. To this end the flights are rapidly extended in ever-widening circles, till at last, with lightning speed, she makes for the blue sky, to return to the gloom of the hive almost immediately after. During all this time the stimulus of sexual desire has been gathering force, and now, being no longer controllable, she darts off, and up into the sky; almost at once she is recognized by the swarms of males from neighbouring hives, some thousands in number, which for days have been279 seeking this event. Instantly they give eager chase, mounting after her higher and ever higher. But as they ascend so their numbers decrease. Some, the feeble, the ill-fed from impoverished hives, are speedily left behind; many endure to the end, but only one secures the prize, and this great moment of his life is also his last, for the fact of impregnation is no sooner completed than Death claims him. He falls earthwards, as if struck by lightning, and in his fall the intromittent organ is dragged from his body, to be removed by the survivor of this mad flight, on her descent.
She leaves a bride and returns a widow, filled with murderous intentions. There are captive queens in the hive, and she can tolerate no rivals. So soon as she has removed from her person the embarrassing souvenir of her nuptial flight she makes for the Royal cells. Accompanied by attendant workers she proceeds to tear off their waxen coverings and put their occupants to death with a thrust of her stiletto. No sooner is the work of execution over than the dead bodies are seized by the workers and borne out of the hive. This awful task is soon over, however, and henceforth for four or five long years she remains a prisoner within the walls of her own palace. Craving neither the air nor the light of the sun, she will die without once having sipped the nectar from a flower. And during all this time, save during the winter sleep, her sole duty is to produce sons and daughters. In the prime of her maternity she may lay as many as three thousand eggs a day. But strangely enough the number of eggs produced is determined for her by the workers, who are the real rulers in this constitutional state. By varying the amount and quality of the food they give her they can increase or check the280 number of eggs produced; while even the sex of the resultant larva is apparently also under their control.
During that brief, weird honeymoon in the clouds she received a store of spermatozoa, the fertilizing male germs, sufficient for all the eggs she can ever lay, and they may amount to nigh on a million. Incredible as this may seem, their purpose is yet more so; for they are destined to be expended solely in the production of female offspring doomed for the most part to perpetual spinsterhood. One youngster in ten thousand may attain to a higher state, may, if Fate wills, become a queen and mother. And because of this need for mothers to carry on the race, this extraordinary state of affairs has been brought about. All is under the control of her daughters—the spinster-workers. As she proceeds on her rounds of egg-laying an attendant crowd waits upon her, controlling her actions by gentle caresses. As she passes from cell to cell, th............