The spider eats her male; the mantis eats her male; in locustians, the female is fecundated by a spermatophore, an enormous genital bunch-of-grapes. She gnaws through this envelope of spermatozoides to the last shred. These two facts should be brought together. Whether the female swallow the male entire, or only the product of his genital glands, it is probably in both cases a complementary act of fecundation. There are possibly in the male, assimilable elements necessary for the development of the eggs, almost as the albumen of seeds, little aborted plants, is necessary for nourishing the vegetable embryo, surviving plantlet. Plants, according to recent study, are born twins: in order to live one must devour the other. Shifted to animal life, and slightly modified, this mechanism explains what one terms, from sentimentalism, the sexual ferocity of the she-mantis and the she-spider. Life is made out of life. Nothing lives save at the expense of life. The male insect nearly always dies immediately after the mating; in locustians he is literally emptied by the genital effort: whether the female respect, or devour him, his life would hardly be longer, or shorter thereby. He is sacrificed; why, if this is for the good of the species should he not be eaten? Anyhow, he is eaten. It is his destiny, and he feels it coming, at least the male spider does, and the male mantis allows himself to be gnawed with a perfect stoicism. The spider jibs, the other submits. It is really a matter of ritual, not of accident or of crime. One might try experiments. One might prevent the female dectic from pecking the mistletoe berry which the male has discharged on her; one might watch the coupling of mantes and isolate them immediately: and then follow all the phases from laying to hatching. If the spermatophagy of the dectic is useless, if the murder of the male mantis is useless, it will annul the foregoing reflections, and others will rise.