The Egyptian ichneumon lives in families. It seems that it is very interesting to see them on a hunting expedition, first the male, then the female, then the young in Indian file. Female and young do not take their eyes off father, and imitate all his gestures with care: one might think the train was a large serpent moving in reeds. The wolf who like the fox lives in pairs, helps his female and feeds her, but he does not know his young and will eat them if they come to hand. Certain great apes, gibbon and orang are temporarily monogamous. Polygamy would be explained by the rarity of males; which is not the case with most mammals, among whom the males are almost constantly more numerous. Buffon was the first to note this predominance, neither has he nor has anyone since, given a satisfactory explanation. People have said that in man, at least, the elder parent gives the sex to the offspring, and the more surely as the difference in age is greater, but, by this reckoning one would have almost nothing but males. People have also said that the younger the woman, the more likely the child to be male. The early marriages of the past are supposed to have yielded more males than the late marriages of the present. None of these statements is serious. What remains past doubt is that European humanity, to consider only that, gives an excess of males. The general average is about 105, with extremes of 101 in Russia, and 113 in Greece; the French average is the same as the general average. One has not been able to make out, in these variations, either influence of race, or of climate, or of taxes, or of nationality, or anything else in particular. There are more male humans, more male sheep: it is a fact, which being regular, will be difficult to explain. We find here superabundance, there penury of males, but neither does the abundance determine the customs, nor is it likely the lack of males would do so. There are so few males among gnats that Fabre was the first to recognize them, the proportion about one male to ten females. This in no way produces polygamy, for the male dies the instant after coupling. Nine out of ten gnat females die virgin, and even without having seen a male, without knowing that males exist: perhaps celibacy augments their ferocity, for it is the female gnat and she alone who sucks our gore. One supposes also that female spiders outnumber the males ten or twenty to one: perhaps the buck who has escaped the jaws of one mistress has the courage to risk his life yet again? It is possible, the male spider who survives his amours may live on for several years. Polygamy seems to exist, and in its most refined form, with one sort of spider, the ctenize, whose males are peculiarly rare. The female digs a nest in the earth, into which the male descends; he lives there some time, then he leaves, comes back: there are several houses between which he divides his time equitably.