each her
by burrowing under the linen cloth. My artifice had no result.

After this set-back, so obvious in its consequences, which only repeated
the lesson of the experiments made with naphthaline when my subject was
the Great Peacock, I ought logically to have abandoned the theory that
the moths are guided to their wedding festivities by means of strongly
scented effluvia. That I did not do so was due to a fortuitous
observation. Chance often has a surprise in store which sets us on the
right road when we have been seeking it in vain.

One afternoon, while trying to determine whether sight plays any part in
the search for the female once the males had entered the room, I placed
the female in a bell-glass and gave her a slender twig of oak with
withered leaves as a support. The glass was set upon a table facing the
open window. Upon entering the room the moths could not fail to see the
prisoner, as she stood directly in the way. The tray, containing a layer
of sand, on which the female had passed the preceding day and night,
covered with a wire-gauze dish-cover, was in my way. Without
premeditation I placed it at the other end of the room on the floor, in
a corner where there was but little light. It was a dozen yards away
from the window.

The result of these preparations entirely upset my preconceived ideas.
None of the arrivals stopped at the bell-glass, where the female was
plainly to be seen, the light falling full upon her prison. Not a
glance, not an inquiry. They all flew to the further end of the room,
into the dark corner where I had placed the tray and the empty
dish-cover.

They alighted on the wire dome, explored it persistently, beating their
wings and jostling one another. All the afternoon, until sunset, the
moths danced about the empty cage the same saraband that the actual
presence of the female had previously evoked. Finally they departed: not
all, for there were some that would not go, held by some magical
attractive force.

Truly a strange result! The moths collected where there was apparently
nothing to attract them, and remained there, unpersuaded by the sense of
sight; they passed the bell-glass actually containing the female without
halting for a moment, although she must have been seen by many of the
moths both going and coming. Maddened by a lure, they paid no attention
to the reality.

What was the lure that so deceived them? All the preceding night and all
the morning the female had