Bad luck must not, however, make us forget the little that we have learnt. At one sitting, some sixty males came. Considering the rarity of the Monk and remembering the years of fruitless searches conducted by my assistants and myself, we stand astounded at this number. With a female for a bait, the undiscoverable has suddenly become a multitude. Now where did they come from? From every quarter and from very far, beyond a doubt. During my years of exploration of my neighbourhood, I have got to know every bush in it and every heap of stones; and I am in a position to declare that there are no Oak Eggars there. To make the swarm that filled my study, the whole of the surrounding district must have contributed, from this side and from that, within a radius which I dare not determine. Three years pass; and fortune persistently entreated at last grants me two Monk-cocoons. Towards the middle of August, both of them, within a few days of each other, give me a female. This is a piece of luck which will allow me to vary and renew my tests. I quickly repeat the experiments which have already procured me a most positive reply from the Great Peacock. The pilgrim of the day is no less clever than the pilgrim of the night. He baffles all my tricks. He hastens infallibly to the prisoner, in her wire-gauze cage, in whatever part of the house the apparatus be installed; he is able to discover her hidden in a cupboard; he guesses her secret presence in a box of any kind, provided that it be not tightly closed. He ceases to come, for lack of information, when the casket is hermetically sealed. Thus far we see merely a repetition of the feats of the Great Peacock. A well-closed box, the air contained in which does not communicate with the outer atmosphere, leaves the Monk in complete ignorance of the prisoner’s whereabouts. Not one arrives, even when the box is exposed for every eye to see in the window. This brings back, more urgently than ever, the idea of odoriferous effluvia, intransmissible through a wall of metal, cardboard, wood or glass, no matter which. When put to the test, the great night Moth was not baffled by the naphthaline, whose powerful smell ought, to my thinking, to mask ultrasubtle emanations, imperceptible to any human nostrils. I repeat the experiment with the Monk. This time I lavish all the resources in the way of scents and stenches that my store of drugs permits. I place the saucers, partly inside the wire-gauze cage, the female’s prison, and partly all round it, in a continuous circle. Some contain naphthaline, others oil of lavender, others paraffin, others, lastly, alkaline sulphurs smelling of rotten eggs. Short of asphyxiating the prisoner, I can do no more. These arrangements are made in the morning, so that the room may be thoroughly saturated when the trysting-hour arrives.