still and seems indifferent. He is small and she is large. At
last he approaches; spreads his wings, which tremble
convulsively; leaps on her back, and fixes himself there. The
preludes are long and the coupling itself sometimes occupies five
or six hours. Then they separate. But the same day or the
following day she seizes him and eats him up in small mouthfuls.
She will permit a whole series of males to have intercourse with
her, always eating them up directly afterward. Fabre has even
seen her eating the male while still on her back, his head and
neck gone, but his body still firmly attached. (J.H. Fabre,
_Souvenirs Entomologiques_, fifth series, p. 307.) Fabre also
describes in great detail (ibid., ninth series, chs. xxi-xxii)
the sexual parades of the Languedoc scorpion (_Scorpio
occitanus_), an arachnid. These parades are in public; for their
subsequent intercourse the couple seek complete seclusion, and
the female finally eats the male.

An insect (a species of _Empis_) has been described which excites
the female by manipulating a large balloon. "This is of
elliptical shape, about seven millimeters long (nearly twice as
long as the fly), hollow, and composed entirely of a single layer
of minute bubbles, nearly uniform in size, arranged in regular
circles concentric with the axis of the structure. The
beautiful, glistening whiteness of the object when the sun shines
upon it makes it very conspicuous. The bubbles were slightly
viscid, and in nearly every case there was a small fly pressed
into the front end of the balloon, apparently as food for the
_Empis_. In all cases they were dead. The balloon appears to be
made while the insect is flying in the air. Those flying highest
had the smallest balloons. The bubbles are probably produced by