There are many singularities in the sexual habits of small crustaceans, the male bopyre lives as parasite on the female, who is four or five times larger; oddity increased by the female herself being the parasite of the palemon. It is she who forms the little bloatedness which one notices, grayish when cooked, on the heads of shrimps, turned pink. Fishermen state that this spot is a small sole, but they also tell other yarns: for example, that anatifes, the peduncular mussels which one sees on drift-wood are the embryos of wild-ducks, and one noble sailor has himself seen them taking flight.[1] The male linguatula is also smaller than the female, he has one testicle but two long copulating organs which simultaneously penetrate the female, ejaculating toward the two ovaries. Another small male is the hydrachne, water acarian, two or three times smaller than the female, he alone is provided with a tail at the end of which are his genital organs; the female's are formed by a papilla situated beneath the belly and marked by a white patch surrounding the sluice. The male swims, the female comes to meet him, lifts herself obliquely and brings her white spot into touch with her lover's caudal extremity, the junction is accomplished. One then sees the male drag along the kicking female; the coupling, with periods of rest, but without interruption of profound contact continues for several days.
With insects of superior talents it is, on the contrary, the female who carries off the male: the ant carries hers on her back, while he bends his abdomen into a bow toward her vulva; thus weighted, she flies, mounts, planes, then falls with him like a drop of water. He dies on the spot, the female gets up, returns to the nest, lays, before dying. The fetes of the ant are of the whole ant hill at once, the fall of the lovers like a golden cascade, and the resurrection of the females gleams in the sun like a russet foam. The scutilary is an insect sometimes squarish or shield-shaped resembling the green wood louse, sometimes long and cylindrical with points and lines of all colours on its wings. One of them, scutiform, known as lineata, with red back and black stripes, is common on umbellifera. Copulation takes place end to end; one can see them thus, the female towing the smaller male from leaf to leaf, from umbel to umbel.[2] The forficula also couple end to end, fleas, whose male is smaller, couple belly to belly with feet enlaced; the position recalling that of dragon flies is more remarkable, in the louvette, a small insect which lives on broom, and readily throws itself upon man: the vulva is in fact, near the mouth.