the overexcited male descended toward the supposedly willing vulturess, she retreated into the carcass, and after a short dispute she made him understand that the time was not yet ripe, and sent him off. After which the groans recommenced; the female seemed annoyed; she mounted the cage of bone, swelling her wings, lifting her tail, cooing. The union finally took place in a great commotion of ruffled feathers and shaken bones. The same author has precisely noted the complicated preludes indulged in by two sparrows. I give the résumé, graphically: A troop of sparrows on the roof in the morning; calm, they make their toilet. Arrives a large male who emits a violent cry; one of the females replies at once, not by a cry but by an act: she leaves the group. The male joins her, she flies to a neighbouring roof; there follows a long chatter beak to beak. New flight; the male rests in the sun, then rejoins the minx. The assaults begin, the male is repulsed. The female moves off, in little hops. The edge of the roof stops the flight, she profits by this excuse and surrenders. But it is the prodigious insect whom one must interrogate. One knows the cantharides, these beautiful coleoptera on whom pharmacy has inflicted so wicked a reputation. The female gnaws her oak leaf, the male arrives, mounts her back, enlaces her with his hind feet. Then with his stretched abdomen he flagellates the female alternately to right and left with frantic speed. At the same time he massages her, lashes her neck furiously with his front feet, all his body shakes and vibrates. The female remains passive, awaiting the calm. It comes. Without letting go the male stretches out his forelegs in a cross, unbends a little, wagging from head and corselet. The female starts eating again. The calm is short; the male's follies recommence. Then there is another manœuvre, with the fold of his legs and tarses, he seizes the female's antennæ, forces her to lift her head, at the same time redoubling the lashing of her flanks. New pose; new start of the flagellation: finally the female opens. The coupling lasts a day and a night, after which the male falls, but remains knotted to the female who drags him from leaf to leaf, the penis attached to her organs. Sometimes he also takes a mouthful here and there; when he drops off it is to die. The female lays the eggs and dies in her turn. The cerocome, an insect kin to the cantharide, has analogous habits, but the female is even colder, and the male is obliged to tap more than one before getting an answer. In vain he beats the sides of his chosen companion with his paws, she remains insensible, inert. This action, moreover, has the full appearance of having passed to a state of mania in the male muscles, so much so that, in default of females, males mount and pummel each other. As soon as a male is charged by another male he takes the female attitude and remains quiet; one sees pyramids of three