Gallinaceæ and web-feet present certain birds best known and most useful to us. They are nearly all polygamous. The cock needs about a dozen hens, he can do with a much larger number, but in that case his ardour wears itself out. The duck, very licentious, is accused of sodomy. Not only is he polygamous, but anything will serve him. He might better be a natural example of promiscuity. A gander is good for ten or twelve geese, the cock-pheasant for eight or ten hens. The lyrure tetras needs many more, he leads a sultan's harem behind him. At dawn, in the season of amours, the male starts whistling with a noise like steel on a grindstone, simultaneously stretching himself up, and spreading the fan of his tail, opening and puffing his wings. When the sun clears the horizon he rejoins his females, dances before them, while they devour him with their eyes, then he mounts them, according to his caprice, and with great vivacity.
Polygamy is the rule among herbivora; bulls, bucks, stallions, bison are made to reign over a troop of females. Domesticity changes their permanent polygamy into successive polygamy. Stags go from female to female without tying up to any; the females follow this example. A specie immediately akin gives, on the contrary, an example of the couple; the roebuck and his doe live in family, and bring up their young until these are ready to mate. The male of a certain Asian antelope needs more than a hundred docile females. Naturally, these harems can only be formed by the destruction of other males. This hundred females represents possibly more than a hundred males put out of business, males being always the more numerous sex, among mammals. The utility of such hecatombs to the race is not certain. Doubtless one may suppose that the surviving male is the strongest, or one of the strongest of his generation, that is the lucky element, but whatever his vigour it may be expected to wane at some point or other before a hundred females desiring satisfaction. Some females are forgotten, others fecundated in moments of weariness: for a certain number of good products, there are a number of mediocre creations. True, these are destined, if male, to perish in future combats; but if they are female, and if they receive the favours of the chief, this system might have for consequence the progressive degradation of the specie. It is however, probable that the necessary equilibrium is re-established; combats between females, combats of coquetry, incitements of femininity, doubtless take place, and it is the triumph of the malest male and of the most female females.