Anatomy forces female seals and walruses to turn over to receive the male. In the specie commonly called the sea-lion, she seems according to observations perhaps too sketchy, to make the advances. The male being stretched out at rest she rolls before him, plagues him, while he grumbles. She succeeds in moving him, and they go to play in the water. On return the female lies on her back, the male who is much thicker and longer covers her, propping himself on his arms. The coupling lasts seven or eight minutes. The posture of female seals is also that of hedgehogs, and truly the cavalage here must be particularly thorny. Despite his roof the male tortoise climbs onto the female and installs himself there, clinging to her shell with the nails of his forefeet; there he stays fifteen days having slowly introduced into her patient organs his long round prong, ending in a sort of pointed ball, pressing with all his strength the enormous clitoris of the female. We find ourselves far from mammifers and from the excitability of the bull; this coupling which lasts a whole season leads us toward the voluptuous laziness of disgusting and marvellous gasteropodes. According to tales which are, perhaps, not contradictory, crocodiles couple in the water, according to some, and on land according to others; in water laterally; on land, the female on her back. It is said to be the male who puts her on her back, and who, coition completed, helps her to right herself; charming spectacle, which I can not guarantee to be so, but which would improve our idea of the gallantry of these ancient divinities. I don't know whether anyone has ever remarked that the caduceus of Mercury represents two serpents coupled. To describe the caduceus is to describe the love mechanism of ophidians. The bifurcated penis penetrates the vagina, the bodies interlace fold on fold while the two heads rise over the stiffened coils and look fixedly at each other, for a long time, eye gazing into eye. Certain fish have penial organs; they can then realize true copulation; thus dog-fish, bounce, sharks, sea-hinds (_biches_). The males grip the females and hold them with hooks often formed at the expense of the abdominal fin, by cartilaginous pieces which penetrate the female orifice and serve as slide to the penis. The male skate seizes the female, turns her over, clamps himself to her, belly to belly, holds her with his penial tentacles and finishes the coupling, releasing his seed which flows into the cloaca. The operation is repeated several times; separated by the emission of skatelets who are born alive, it continues until the female has discharged the greater part of her eggs. [1] Here R. de G. uses the term _marmotte_; up to this the word I have translated marmoset has been ouistiti. CHAPTER X MECHANISM OF LOVE