for so long
driven them helpless to the wastage of life and love.

I would ask all those who deny this modern claim of women to consider
in all seriousness the two cases I have brought forward--that of the
bee-hives, and even more the destruction by the female spider of her
male lover. That they have their parallel in our society to-day is a
fact that few will deny. I have tried to show the real danger that
lurks in every form of sex-parasitism. It would lead us too far from
our purpose to comment in further detail on the suggestions offered by
these curious examples of sex-martyrs among our earliest ancestral
lovers. Those whose eyes are not blinded will not fail to see.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] So deep-rooted has been this opinion of female inferiority that
it has formed the basis of many theories of sex. Thus Richarz holds
that "the male sex represents a higher grade of development in the
embryo." Hough thinks males are born when the female system is at its
best, females in periods of growth, reparation, or disease. Tiedman
and others regard females as an arrested male, while Velpau, on the
other hand, believes them to be degenerated from primitive males. See
Geddes and Thomson, _Evolution of Sex_, p. 39.

[17] The theory of Lester Ward, to which I have already referred,
supports this view.

[18] I have left out of my inquiry any reference to plants, though all
that has been said of the _protozoa_ in the last chapter is equally
true of the _protophyta_, the basis of plant life. Among plants there
are many beautiful and instructive examples of the relative position
of the female and the male plant. A well-known case is that of the
hemp-plant, where the sexes are indistinguishable up to the period of
fertility, but when the male plants have shed their pollen, and thus
fulfilled their duty of fertilising the female plants, they cease to
grow, turn yellow and sere, and if at all crowded wither and die. Many
other examples might be cited, but the question is too wide to enter
on here. See Lester Ward, _op. cit._, pp. 318-322.

[19] _Encyclopaedia Britannica_, article on "Sex," by Prof. Geddes;
also _Evolution of Sex_, pp. 20, 21. Prof. Lester Ward, _Pure
Sociology_, Part II, Chap. XIV, gives an ingenuous and complete view
of the early superiority of the female, to which he gives the name of
the Gynaecocentric theory, as opposed to the usual Androcentric theory,
based on the superiority of the male. While fully appreciatin