entered the room, traversed its
gas-laden atmosphere, and made for the wire-gauze cover with the same
certainty as in a room full of fresh air.

My confidence in the olfactory theory was shaken. Moreover, I could not
continue my experiments. On the ninth day, exhausted by her fruitless
period of waiting, the female died, having first deposited her barren
eggs upon the woven wire of her cage. Lacking a female, nothing could be
done until the following year.

I determined next time to take suitable precautions and to make all
preparations for repeating at will the experiments already made and
others which I had in mind. I set to work at once, without delay.

In the summer I began to buy caterpillars at a halfpenny apiece.

The market was in the hands of some neighbouring urchins, my habitual
providers. On Friday, free of the terrors of grammar, they scoured the
fields, finding from time to time the Great Peacock caterpillar, and
bringing it to me clinging to the end of a stick. They did not dare to
touch it, poor little imps! They were thunderstruck at my audacity when
I seized it in my fingers as they would the familiar silkworm.

Reared upon twigs of the almond-tree, my menagerie soon provided me with
magnificent cocoons. In winter assiduous search at the base of the
native trees completed my collection. Friends interested in my
researches came to my aid. Finally, after some trouble, what with an
open market, commercial negotiations, and searching, at the cost of many
scratches, in the undergrowth, I became the owner of an assortment of
cocoons of which twelve, larger and heavier than the rest, announced
that they were those of females.

Disappointment awaited me. May arrived; a capricious month which set my
preparations at naught, troublesome as these had been. Winter returned.
The _mistral_ shrieked, tore the budding leaves of the plane-trees, and
scattered them over the ground. It was cold as December. We had to
light fires in the evening, and resume the heavy clothes we had begun to
leave off.

My butterflies were too sorely tried. They emerged late and were torpid.
Around my cages, in which the females waited--to-day one, to-morrow
another, according to the order of their birth--few males or none came
from without. Yet there were some in the neighbourhood, for those with
large antennae which issued from my collection of cocoons were placed in
the garden directly they had emerged, and were recognised. Whethe