r
neighbours or strangers, very few came, and those without enthusiasm.
For a moment they entered, then disappeared and did not reappear. The
lovers were as cold as the season.

Perhaps, too, the low temperature was unfavourable to the informing
effluvia, which might well be increased by heat and lessened by cold as
is the case with many odours. My year was lost. Research is
disappointing work when the experimenter is the slave of the return and
the caprices of a brief season of the year.

For the third time I began again. I reared caterpillars; I scoured the
country in search of cocoons. When May returned I was tolerably
provided. The season was fine, responding to my hopes. I foresaw the
affluence of butterflies which had so impressed me at the outset, when
the famous invasion occurred which was the origin of my experiments.

Every night, by squadrons of twelve, twenty, or more, the visitors
appeared. The female, a strapping, big-bellied matron, clung to the
woven wire of the cover. There was no movement on her part; not even a
flutter of the wings. One would have thought her indifferent to all
that occurred. No odour was emitted that was perceptible to the most
sensitive nostrils of the household; no sound that the keenest ears of
the household could perceive. Motionless, recollected, she waited.

The males, by twos, by threes and more, fluttered upon the dome of the
cover, scouring over it quickly in all directions, beating it
continually with the ends of their wings. There were no conflicts
between rivals. Each did his best to penetrate the enclosure, without
betraying any sign of jealousy of the others. Tiring of their fruitless
attempts, they would fly away and join the dance of the gyrating crowd.
Some, in despair, would escape by the open window: new-comers would
replace them: and until ten o'clock or thereabouts the wire dome of the
cover would be the scene of continual attempts at approach, incessantly
commencing, quickly wearying, quickly resumed.

Every night the position of the cage was changed. I placed it north of
the house and south; on the ground-floor and the first floor; in the
right wing of the house, or fifty yards away in the left wing; in the
open air, or hidden in some distant room. All these sudden removals,
devised to put the seekers off the scent, troubled them not at all. My
time and my pains were wasted, so far as deceiving them was concerned.

The memory of places has no part in the