The bonellie, which is one of the most definite examples of dimorphism, is also an example of the singular feminism which one normally finds in nature. For feminism reigns there, especially among inferior species and in insects. It is almost only among mammifers and in certain groups of birds that the male is equal or superior to the female. One would say that he has slowly attained a first place not intended by nature for him. It is probable that, relieved of all care, after the fecundation, he has had more leisure than the female wherein to develop his powers. It is also possible, and more probable, that these extremely diverse cases of resemblance and dissemblance are due to causes too numerous and too varied for us to seize their logical sequence. The facts are obvious: the male and the female differ nearly always, and differ often profoundly. Many insects vulgarly supposed to be different species are but males and females of one race seeking each other for mating. It needs some knowledge to recognize a pair of blackbirds, the male black all over, and the female brown-backed with grey throat and russet belly. While hermaphrodism demands a perfect resemblance of individuals--save in cases like the cirripedes, where there is a male supplementary parasite--the separation of the sexes leads, in principle, to dimorphism, the rôle of the male, his modes of activity differ from those of the female; a difference found also among dioic plants. Hemp is a well known case, although the taller shoots which the peasants call male are in exact contrary, the females. The small garden-loving nettle has two sexes on the same stalk; the greater nettle, found in uncultivated land, is dioic: the male stalk has very long flopping leaves and flowers hanging along the stem; the leaves and flowers of the female stalk are short and stand almost upright. Here the dimorphism is not in favour of the female, but impartial. Of insects the female is nearly always the superior individual. It is not this marvellous small creature, nature's divergent and minuscule king who offers us the spectacle of the bilhargie, spearwort, whereof the female, mediocre blade, lives, like a sword sheathed in the hollow stomach of the male. This timid life and its perpetual amours would horrify the bold female scarabœa, adroit chalicodomes, cold wise lycoses, and proud, terrible, amazonian mantes. In the insect world the male is the frail elegant sex, gentle and sober, with no employment save to please and to love. To the female the heavy work of digging, of masonry, and the danger of hunt and of war.