My friend Bull, as decent a Dog as ever lived, had this among many other eccentricities: if he found in the dust of the road the dried up corpse of a Mole flattened under the heels of the passers-by, mummified by the heat of the sun, he would revel in rolling himself over it from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail; he would rub himself in it over and over again, shaken with nervous spasms, turning first on one side, then on the other. It was his sachet of musk, his flask of eau-de-Cologne. When scented to his liking, he would get up, shake himself and trot off, pleased as Punch with his pomade. Let us not abuse him and, above all, let us not discuss the matter. There are tastes of all kinds in this world. Why should not some of the insects that dote on the smell of the dead have similar habits? Dermestes and Saprini come to the dragon arum; all day long they swarm in throngs, although free to go away; many of them die in the riot of the orgy. It is no rich provender that keeps them, for the flower gives them nothing to eat; it is not a question of laying eggs, for they take good care not to settle their grubs in that famine-stricken spot. What are they doing here, the frenzied ones? Apparently intoxicating themselves with fetidness, just as Bull did on the carcass of a Mole. And this intoxication of smell attracts them from every part around, from very far perhaps, one cannot tell. Even so the Necrophori, in quest of an establishment for their young, hasten from the fields to my putrefying Moles. Both are informed by a potent smell, which offends our nostrils sixty yards away, but which travels ahead and delights them at distances where our own power of scent ceases. The hydnocystis, the Bolboceras’ treat, has none of these violent emanations, capable of being diffused through space; it is devoid of smell, at least to us. The insect that hunts for it does not come from a distance; it inhabits the very places where the cryptogam lies. However faint the effluvia of the underground morsel, the prying epicure, equipped for the purpose, has every facility for perceiving them: he operates close by, on the surface of the soil. The Dog’s case is the same: he goes along searching, with his nose to the ground. Then, too, the real truffle, the essential object of his quest, possesses a most pronounced odour. But what are we to say of the Great Peacock and the Banded Monk, making their way to the female born in captivity? They hasten from the ends of the horizon. What do they perceive at that distance? Is it really an odour, as our physiology understands the word? I cannot bring myself to believe it.