THE GREAT PEACOCK
It was a memorable evening. I shall call it the Great Peacock evening.
Who does not know the magnificent Moth, the largest in Europe, clad in
maroon velvet with a necktie of white fur? The wings, with their
sprinkling of grey and brown, crossed by a faint zig-zag and edged with
smoky white, have in the centre a round patch, a great eye with a black
pupil and a variegated iris containing successive black, white,
chestnut and purple arcs.
No less remarkable is the caterpillar, in colour an undecided yellow.
On the top of thinly-scattered tubercles, crowned with a palisade of
black hairs, are set beads of turquoise blue. His stout brown cocoon,
so curious with its exit-shaft shaped like an eel-trap, is usually
fastened to the bark at the base of old almond-trees. The caterpillar
feeds on the leaves of the same tree.
Well, on the morning of the 6th of May, a female emerges from her
cocoon in my presence, on the table of my insect-laboratory. I
forthwith cloister her, still damp with the humours of the hatching,
under a wire-gauze bell-jar. For the rest, I cherish no particular
plans. I incarcerate her from mere habit, the habit of the observer
always on the look-out for what may happen.
It was a lucky thought. At nine o’clock in the evening, just as the
household is going to bed, there is a great stir in the room next to
mine. Little Paul, half-undressed, is rushing about, jumping and
stamping, knocking the chairs over like a mad thing. I hear him call
me:
“Come quick!” he screams. “Come and see these Moths, big as birds! The
room is full of them!”
I hurry in. There is enough to justify the child’s enthusiastic and
hyperbolical exclamations, an invasion as yet unprecedented in our
house, a raid of giant Moths. Four are already caught and lodged in a
bird-cage. Others, more numerous, are fluttering on the ceiling.
At this sight, the prisoner of the morning is recalled to my mind.
“Put on your things, laddie,” I say to my son. “Leave your cage and
come with me. We shall see something interesting.”
We run downstairs to go to my study, which occupies the right wing of
the house. In the kitchen I find the servant, who is also bewildered by
what is happening and stands flicking her apron at great Moths whom she
took at first for Bats.
The Great Peacock, it would seem, has taken possession of pretty well
every part of the house. What will it be around my prisoner, the cause
of this incursion? Luckily, one of the two windows of the study had
been left open. The approach is not blocked.
We enter the room, candle in hand. What we see is unforgetable. With a
soft flick-flack the great Moths fly around the bell-jar, alight, set
off again, come back, fly up to the ceiling and down. They rush at the
candle, putting it out with a stroke of their wings; they descend on
our shoulders, clinging to our clothes, grazing our faces. The scene
suggests a wizard’s cave, with its whirl of Bats. Little Paul holds my
hand tighter than usual, to keep up his courage.
How many of them are there? About a score. Add to these the number that
have strayed into the kitchen, the nursery and the other rooms of the
house; and the total of those who have arrived from the outside cannot
fall far short of forty. As I said, it was a memorable evening, this
Great Peacock evening. Coming from every direction and apprised I know
not how, here are forty lovers eager to pay their respects to the
marriageable bride born that morning amid the mysteries of my study.
For the moment let us disturb the swarm of wooers no further. The flame
of the candle is a danger to the visitors, who fling themselves into it
madly and singe their wings. We will resume the observation tomorrow
with an experimental interrogatory thought out beforehand.
But first let us clear the ground and speak of what happens every night
during the week that my observation lasts. Each time it is pitch dark,
between eight and ten o’clock, when the Moths arrive one by one. It is
stormy weather, the sky is very much overcast and the darkness is so
profound that even in the open air, in the garden, far from the shadow
of the trees, it is hardly possible to see one’s hand before one’s
face.
In addition to this darkness there is the difficulty of access. The
house is hidden by tall plane-trees; it is approached by a walk thickly
bordered with lilac- and rose-trees, forming a sort of outer vestibule;
it is protected against the mistral by clumps of pines and screens of
cypresses. Clusters of bushy shrubs make a rampart a few steps away
from the door. It is through this tangle of branches, in complete
darkness, that the Great Peacock has to tack about to reach the object
of his pilgrimage.
Under such conditions, the Brown Owl would not dare leave the hole in
his olive-tree. The Moth, better-endowed with his faceted optical
organs than the night-bird with its great eyes, goes forward without
hesitating and passes through without knocking against things. He
directs his tortuous flight so skilfully that, despite the obstacles
overcome, he arrives in a state of perfect freshness, with his big
wings intact, with not a scratch upon him. The darkness is light enough
for him.
Even if we grant that it perceives certain rays unknown to common
retinæ, this extraordinary power of sight cannot be what warns the Moth
from afar and brings him hurrying to the spot. The distance and the
screens interposed make this quite impossible.
Besides, apart from deceptive refractions, of which there is no
question in this case, the indications provided by light are so precise
that we go straight to the thing seen. Now the Moth sometimes blunders,
not as to the general direction which he is to take, but as to the
exact spot where the interesting events are happening. I have said that
the children’s nursery, which is at the side of the house opposite my
study, the real goal of my visitors at the present moment, was occupied
by the Moths before I went there with a light in my hand. These
certainly were ill-informed. There was the same throng of hesitating
visitors in the kitchen; but here the light of a lamp, that
irresistible lure to nocturnal insects, may have beguiled the eager
ones.
Let us consider only the places that were in the dark. In these there
are several stray Moths. I find them more or less everywhere around the
actual spot aimed at. For instance, when the captive is in my study,
the visitors do not all enter by the open window, the safe and direct
road, only two or three yards away from the caged prisoner. Several of
them come in downstairs, wander about the hall and at most reach the
staircase, a blind alley barred at the top by a closed door.
These data tell us that the guests at this nuptial feast do not make
straight for their object, as they would if they derived their
information from some kind of luminous radiation, whether known or
unknown to our physical science. It is something else that apprises
them from afar, leads them to the proximity of the exact spot and then
leaves the final discovery to the airy uncertainty of random searching.
It is very much like the way in which we ourselves are informed by
hearing and smell, guides which are far from accurate when we want to
decide the precise point of origin of the sound or the smell.
What are the organs of information that direct the rutting Moth on his
nightly pilgrimage? One suspects the antennæ, which, in the males, do
in fact seem to be questioning space with their spreading tufts of
feathers. Are those glorious plumes mere ornaments, or do they at the
same time play a part in the perception of the effluvia that guide the
enamoured swain? A conclusive experiment seems to present no
difficulty. Let us try it.
On the day after the invasion, I find in the study eight of my visitors
of the day before. They are perched motionless on the transoms of the
second window, which is kept closed. The others, when their dance was
over, about ten o’clock in the evening, went out as they came in, that
is to say, through the first window, which is left open day and night.
Those eight persevering ones are just what I want for my schemes.
With a sharp pair of scissors, without otherwise touching the Moths, I
cut off their antennæ, near the base. The patients take hardly any
notice of the operation. Not one moves; there is scarcely a flutter of
the wings. These are excellent conditions: the wound does not seem at
all serious. Undistraught by pain, the Moths bereft of their horns will
adapt themselves all the better to my plans. The rest of the day is
spent in placid immobility on the cross-bars of the window.
There are still a few arrangements to be made. It is important in
particular to shift the scene of operations and not to leave the female
before the eyes of the maimed ones at the moment when they resume their
nocturnal flight, else the merit of their quest would disappear. I
therefore move the bell-jar with its captives and place it under a
porch at the other end of the house, some fifty yards from my study.
When night comes, I go to make a last inspection of my eight victims.
Six have flown out through the open window; two remain behind, but
these have dropped to the floor and no longer have the strength to turn
over if I lay them on their backs. They are exhausted, dying. Pray do
not blame my surgical work. This quick decreptitude occurs invariably,
even without the intervention of my scissors.
Six, in better condition, have gone off. Will they return to the bait
that attracted them yesterday? Though deprived of their antennæ, will
they be able to find the cage, now put in another place, at a
considerable distance from its original position?
The cage is standing in the dark, almost in the open air. From time to
time, I go out with a lantern and a Butterfly-net. Each visitor is
captured, examined, catalogued and forthwith let loose in an adjoining
room, of which I close the door. This gradual elimination will enable
me to tell the exact number, with no risk of counting the same Moth
more than once. Moreover, the temporary gaol, which is spacious and
bare, will in no way endanger the prisoners, who will find a quiet
retreat there and plenty of room. I shall take similar precautions
during my subsequent investigations.
At half past ten no more arrive. The sitting is over. In all,
twenty-five males have been caught, of whom only one was without
antennæ. Therefore, of the six on whom I operated yesterday and who
were hale enough to leave my study and go back to the fields, one alone
has returned to the bell-jar. It is a poor result, on which I dare not
rely when it comes to asserting or denying that the antennæ play a
guiding part. We must begin all over again, on a larger scale.
Next morning I pay a visit to the prisoners of the day before. What I
see is not encouraging. Many are spread out on the floor, almost
lifeless. Several of them give hardly a sign of life when I take them
in my fingers. What can I hope from these cripples? Still, let us try.
Perhaps they will recover their vigour when the time comes to dance the
lovers’ round.
The twenty-four new ones undergo amputation of the antennæ. The old,
hornless one is left out of count, as dying or close to it. Lastly, the
prison-door is left open for the remainder of the day. He who will may
leave the room, he who can shall join in the evening festival. In order
to put such as go out to the test of searching for the bride, the cage,
which they would be sure to notice on the threshold, is once more
removed. I shift it to a room in the opposite wing, on the
ground-floor. The access to this room is of course left free.
Of the twenty-four deprived of their antennæ, only sixteen go outside.
Eight remain, powerless to move. They will soon die where they are. Out
of the sixteen who have left, how many are there that return to the
cage in the evening? Not one! I sit up to capture just seven, all
newcomers, all sporting feathers. This result would seem to show that
the amputation of the antennæ is a rather serious matter. Let us not
draw conclusions yet: a doubt remains and an important one.
“A nice state I’m in!” said Mouflard, the Bull-pup, when his pitiless
breeder had docked his ears. “How dare I show my face before the other
Dogs?”
Can it be that my Moths entertain Master Mouflard’s apprehensions? Once
deprived of their fine plumes, dare they no longer appear amidst their
rivals and a-wooing go? Is it bashfulness on their part or lack of
guidance? Or might it not rather be exhaustion after a wait that
exceeds the duration of an ephemeral flame? Experiment shall tell us.
On the fourth evening, I take fourteen Moths, all new ones, and
imprison them, as they arrive, in a room where I intend them to pass
the night. Next morning, taking advantage of their daytime immobility,
I remove a little of the fur from the centre of their corselet. The
silky fleece comes off so easily that this slight tonsure does not
inconvenience the insects at all; it deprives them of no organ which
may be necessary to them later, when the time comes to find the cage.
It means nothing to the shorn ones; to me it means the unmistakable
sign that the callers have repeated their visit.
This time there are no weaklings incapable of flight. At night, the
fourteen shaven Moths escape into the open. Of course the place of the
cage is once more changed. In two hours, I capture twenty Moths,
including two tonsured ones, no more. Of those who lost their antennæ
two days ago, not one puts in an appearance. Their nuptial time is over
for good and all.
Only two return out of the fourteen marked with a bald patch. Why do
the twelve others hang back, although supplied with what we have
assumed to be their guides, their antennary plumes? Why again that
formidable list of defaulters, which we find nearly always after a
night of sequestration? I perceive but one reply: the Great Peacock is
quickly worn out by the ardours of pairing-time.
With a view to his wedding, the one and only object of his life, the
Moth is gifted with a wonderful prerogative. He is able to discover the
object of his desire in spite of distance, obstacles and darkness. For
two or three evenings, he is allowed a few hours wherein to indulge his
search and his amorous exploits. If he cannot avail himself of them,
all is over: the most exact of compasses fails, the brightest of lamps
expires. What is the use of living after that? Stoically we withdraw
into a corner and sleep our last sleep, which is the end of our
illusions and of our woes alike.
The Great Peacock becomes a Moth only in order to perpetuate his
species. He knows nothing of eating. While so many others, jolly
companions one and all, flit from flower to flower, unrolling the
spiral of their proboscis and dipping it into the honeyed cups, he, the
incomparable faster, wholly freed from the bondage of the belly, has no
thought of refreshment. His mouth-parts are mere rudiments, vain
simulacra, not real organs capable of performing their functions. Not a
sup enters his stomach: a glorious privilege, save that it involves a
brief existence. The lamp needs its drop of oil, if it is not to be
extinguished. The Great Peacock renounces that drop, but at the same
time he renounces long life. Two or three evenings, just time enough to
allow the couple to meet, and that is all: the big Moth has lived.
Then what is the meaning of the staying away of those who have lost
their antennæ? Does it show that the absence of these organs has made
them incapable of finding the wire bell in which the prisoner awaits
them? Not at all. Like the shorn ones, whose operation has left them
uninjured, they prove only that their time is up. Whether maimed or
intact, they are unfit for duty because of their age; and their
non-return is valueless as evidence. For lack of the time necessary for
experimenting, the part played by the antennæ escapes us. Doubtful it
was and doubtful it remains.
My caged prisoner lives for eight days. Every evening she draws for my
benefit a swarm of visitors, in varying numbers, now to one part of the
house, now to another, as I please. I catch them, as they come, with
the net and transfer them, the moment they are captured, to a closed
room, in which they spend the night. Next morning, I mark them with a
tonsure on the thorax.
The aggregate of the visitors during those eight evenings amounts to a
hundred and fifty, an astounding number when I consider how hard I had
to seek during the following two years to collect the materials
necessary for continuing these observations. Though not impossible to
find in my near neighbourhood, the cocoons of the Great Peacock are at
least very rare, for old almond-trees, on which the caterpillars live,
are scarce in these parts. For two winters I visited every one of those
decayed trees at the lower part of the trunk, under the tangle of hard
grasses in which they are clad, and time after time I returned
empty-handed. Therefore my hundred and fifty Moths came from afar, from
very far, within a radius of perhaps a mile and a half or more. How did
they know of what was happening in my study?
The perceptive faculties can receive information from a distance by
means of three agents: light, sound and smell. Is it permissible to
speak of vision in this instance? I will readily admit that sight
guides the visitors once they have passed through the open window. But
before that, in the mystery out of doors! It would not be enough to
grant them the fabulous eye of the Lynx, which was supposed to see
through walls; we should have to admit a keenness of sight which could
be exercised miles away. It is useless to discuss anything so
outrageous; let us pass on.
Sound is likewise out of the question. The great fat Moth, capable of
sending a summons to such a distance, is mute even to the most acute
hearing. It is just possible that she possesses delicate vibrations,
passionate quivers, which might perhaps be perceptible with the aid of
an extremely sensitive microphone; but remember that the visitors have
to be informed at considerable distances, thousands of yards away.
Under these conditions, we cannot waste time thinking of acoustics.
That would be to set silence the task of waking the surrounding air.
There remains the sense of smell. In the domain of our senses, scent,
better than anything else, would more or less explain the onrush of the
Moths, even though they do not find the bait that allures them until
after a certain amount of hesitation. Are there, in point of fact,
effluvia similar to what we call odour, effluvia of extreme subtlety,
absolutely imperceptible to ourselves and yet capable of impressing a
sense of smell better-endowed than ours? There is a very simple
experiment to be made. It is a question of masking those effluvia, of
stifling them under a powerful and persistent odour, which masters the
olfactory sense entirely. The too-strong scent will neutralize the very
faint one.
I begin by sprinkling naphthaline in the room where the males will be
received this evening. Also, in the bell-jar, beside the female, I lay
a big capsule full of the same stuff. When the visiting-hour comes, I
have only to stand in the doorway of the room to get a distinct smell
of gas-works. My artifice fails. The Moths arrive as usual, they enter
the room, pass through its tarry atmosphere and make for the cage with
as much certainty of direction as though in unscented surroundings.
My confidence in the olfactory explanation is shaken. Besides, I am now
unable to go on. Worn out by her sterile wait, my prisoner dies on the
ninth day, after laying her unfertilized eggs on the wirework of the
cage. In the absence of a subject of experiment, there is no more to be
done until next year.
This time I shall take my precautions, I shall lay in a stock so as to
be able to repeat as often as I wish the experiments which I have
already tried and those which I am contemplating. To work, then; and
that without delay.
In the summer, I proclaim myself a buyer of caterpillars at a sou
apiece. The offer appeals to some urchins in the neighbourhood, my
usual purveyors. On Thursdays, emancipated from the horrors of parsing,
[31] they scour the fields, find the fat caterpillar from time to time
and bring him to me clinging to the end of a stick. They dare not touch
him, poor mites; they are staggered at my audacity when I take him in
my fingers as they might take the familiar Silk-worm.
Reared on almond-tree branches, my menagerie in a few days supplies me
with magnificent cocoons. In the winter, assiduous searches at the foot
of the fostering tree complete my collection. Friends interested in my
enquiries come to my assistance. In short, by dint of trouble, much
running about, commercial bargains and not a few scratches from
brambles, I am the possessor of an assortment of cocoons, of which
twelve, bulkier and heavier than the others, tell me that they belong
to females.
A disappointment awaits me, for May arrives, a fickle month which
brings to naught my preparations, the cause of so much anxiety. We have
winter back again. The mistral howls, tears the budding leaves from the
plane-trees and strews the ground with them. It is as cold as in
December. We have to light the fires again at night and resume the
thick clothes which we were beginning to leave off.
My Moths are sorely tried. They hatch late and are torpid. Around my
wire cages, in which the females wait, one to-day, another to-morrow,
according to the order of their birth, few males or none come from the
outside. And yet there are some close at hand, for the plumed gallants
resulting from my harvest were placed out in the garden as soon as they
were hatched and recognized. Whether near neighbours or strangers from
afar, very few arrive; and these are only half-hearted. They enter for
a moment, then disappear and do not return. The lovers have grown cold.
It is also possible that the low temperature is unfavourable to the
tell-tale effluvia, which might well be enhanced by the warmth and
decreased by the cold, as happens with scents. My year is lost. Oh,
what laborious work is this experimenting at the mercy of the sudden
changes and deceptions of a short season!
I begin all over again, for the third time. I rear caterpillars, I
scour the country in search of cocoons. When May returns, I am suitably
provided. The weather is fine and responds to my hopes. I once more see
the incursions which had struck me so powerfully at the beginning, at
the time of the historic invasion which first led to my researches.
Nightly the visitors turn up, in squads of twelve, twenty or more. The
female, a lusty, big-bellied matron, clings firmly to the trellis-work
of the cage. She makes no movement, gives not so much as a flutter of
the wings, seems indifferent to what is going on. Nor is there any
odour, so far as the most sensitive nostrils in the household can
judge, nor any rustle perceptible to the most delicate hearing among my
family, all of whom are called in to bear evidence. In motionless
contemplation she waits.
The others, in twos or threes or more, flop down upon the dome of the
cage, run about it briskly in every direction, lash it with the tips of
their wings in continual movement. There are no affrays between rivals.
With not a sign of jealousy in regard to the other suitors, each does
his utmost to enter the enclosure. Tiring of their vain attempts, they
fly away and join the whirling throng of dancers. Some, giving up all
hope, escape through the open window; fresh arrivals take their places;
and, on the top of the cage, until ten o’clock in the evening, attempts
to approach are incessantly renewed, soon to be abandoned and as soon
resumed.
Every evening the cage is moved to a different place. I put it on the
north side and the south, on the ground-floor and the first floor, in
the right wing and fifty yards away in the left, in the open air or
hidden in a distant room. All these sudden displacements, contrived if
possible to put the seekers off the scent, do not trouble the Moths in
the least. I waste my time and ingenuity in trying to deceive them.
Recollection of places plays no part here. Yesterday, for instance, the
female was installed in a certain room. The feathered males came
fluttering thither for a couple of hours; several even spent the night
there. Next day, at sunset, when I move the cage, all are out of doors.
Ephemeral though they be, the newest comers are ready to repeat their
nocturnal expeditions a second time and a third. Where will they go
first, these veterans of a day?
They know all about the meeting-place of yesterday. One is inclined to
think that they will go back to it, guided by memory, and that, finding
nothing left, they will proceed elsewhither to continue their
investigations. But no: contrary to my expectations, they do nothing of
the sort. Not one reappears in the place which was so thickly crowded
last night; not one pays even a short visit. The room is recognized as
deserted, without the preliminary enquiry which recollection would seem
to demand. A more positive guide than memory summons them elsewhere.
Until now the female has been left exposed, under the meshes of a wire
gauze. The visitors, whose eyes are used to piercing the blackest
gloom, can see her by the vague light of what to us is darkness. What
will happen if I imprison her under an opaque cover? According to its
nature, will not this cover either set free or arrest the tell-tale
effluvia?
Physical science is to-day preparing to give us wireless telegraphy, by
means of the Hertzian waves. Can the Great Peacock have anticipated our
efforts in this direction? In order to set the surrounding air in
motion and to inform pretenders miles away, can the newly-hatched bride
have at her disposal electric or magnetic waves, which one sort of
screen would arrest and another let through? In a word, does she, in
her own manner, employ a kind of wireless telegraphy? I see nothing
impossible in this: insects are accustomed to invent things quite as
wonderful.
I therefore lodge the female in boxes of various characters. Some are
made of tin, some of cardboard, some of wood. All are hermetically
closed, are even sealed with stout putty. I also use a glass bell-jar
standing on the insulating support of a pane of glass.
Well, under these conditions of strict closing, never a male arrives,
not one, however favourable the mildness and quiet of the evening. No
matter its nature, whether of metal or glass, of wood or cardboard, the
closed receptacle forms an insuperable obstacle to the effluvia that
betray the captive’s whereabouts.
A layer of cotton two fingers thick gives the same result. I place the
female in a large jar, tying a sheet of wadding over the mouth by way
of a lid. This is enough to keep the neighbourhood in ignorance of the
secrets of my laboratory. No male puts in an appearance.
On the other hand, make use of ill-closed, cracked boxes, or even hide
them in a drawer, in a cupboard; and, notwithstanding this added
mystery, the Moths will arrive in numbers as great as when they come
thronging to the trellised cage standing in full view on a table. I
have retained a vivid recollection of an evening when the recluse was
waiting in a hat-box at the bottom of a closed wall-cupboard. The Moths
arrived, went to the door, struck it with their wings, knocked at it to
express their wish to enter. Passing wayfarers, coming no one knows
whence across the fields, they well knew what was inside there, behind
those boards.
We must therefore reject the idea of any means of information similar
to that of wireless telegraphy, for the first screen set up, whether a
good conductor or a bad, stops the female’s signals completely. To give
these a free passage and carry them to a distance, one condition is
indispensable: the receptacle in which the female is contained must be
imperfectly closed, so as to establish a communication between the
inner and the outer air. This brings us back to the probability of an
odour, though that was contradicted by my experiment with naphthaline.
My stock of cocoons is exhausted and the problem is still obscure.
Shall I try again another year, the fourth? I abandon the thought for
the fallowing reasons: Moths that mate at night are difficult to
observe if I want to watch their intimate actions. The gallant
certainly needs no illuminant to attain his ends; but my feeble human
powers of vision cannot dispense with one at night. I must have at
least a candle, which is often extinguished by the whirling swarm. A
lantern saves us from these sudden eclipses; but its dim light,
streaked with broad shadows, does not suit a conscientious observer
like myself, who wants to see and to see clearly.
Nor is this all. The light of a lamp diverts the Moths from their
object, distracts them from their business and, if persistent, gravely
compromises the success of the evening. The visitors no sooner enter
the room than they make a wild rush for the flame, singe their fluff in
it and thenceforth, frightened by the scorching received, cease to be
trustworthy witnesses. When they are not burnt, when they are kept at a
distance by a glass chimney, they perch as close as they can to the
light and there stay, hypnotized.
One evening, the female was in the dining-room, on a table facing the
open window. A lighted paraffin-lamp, with a large white-enamel shade,
was hanging from the ceiling. Two of the arrivals alighted on the dome
of the cage and fussed around the prisoner; seven others, after
greeting her as they passed, made for the lamp, circled about it a
little and then, fascinated by the radiant glory of the opal cone,
perched on it, motionless, under the shade. Already the children’s
hands were raised to seize them.
“Don’t,” I said. “Leave them alone. Let us be hospitable and not
disturb these pilgrims to the tabernacle of light.”
All that evening, not one of the seven budged. Next morning, they were
still there. The intoxication of light had made them forget the
intoxication of love.
With creatures so madly enamoured of the radiant flame, precise and
prolonged experiment becomes unfeasible the moment the observer
requires an artificial illuminant. I give up the Great Peacock and his
nocturnal nuptials. I want a Moth with different habits, equally
skilled in keeping conjugal appointments, but performing in the
day-time.
Before continuing with a subject that fulfils these conditions, let us
drop chronological order for a moment and say a few words about a
late-comer who arrived after I had completed my enquiries, I mean the
Lesser Peacock (Attacus pavonia minor, Lin.). Somebody brought me, I
don’t know where from, a magnificent cocoon loosely wrapped in an ample
white-silk envelope. Out of this covering, with its thick, irregular
folds, it was easy to extract a case similar in shape to the Great
Peacock’s, but a good deal smaller. The fore-end, worked into the
fashion of an eel-trap by means of free and converging fibres, which
prevent access to the dwelling while permitting egress without a breach
of the walls, indicated a kinswoman of the big nocturnal Moth; the silk
bore the spinner’s mark.
And, in point of fact, towards the end of March, on the morning of Palm
Sunday, the cocoon with the eel-trap formation provides me with a
female of the Lesser Peacock, whom I at once seclude under a wire-gauze
bell in my study. I open the window to allow the event to be made known
all over the district; I want the visitors, if any come, to find free
entrance. The captive grips the wires and does not move for a week.
A gorgeous creature is my prisoner, in her brown velvet streaked with
wavy lines. She has white fur around her neck; a speck of carmine at
the tip of the upper wings; and four large, eye-shaped spots, in which
black, white, red and yellow-ochre are grouped in concentric crescents.
The dress is very like that of the Great Peacock, but less dark in
colouring. I have seen this Moth, so remarkable for size and costume,
three or four times in my life. It was only the other day that I first
saw the cocoon. The male I have never seen. I only know that, according
to the books, he is half the size of the female and of a brighter and
more florid colour, with orange-yellow on the lower wings.
Will he come, the unknown spark, the plume-wearer on whom I have never
set eyes, so rare does he appear to be in my part of the country? In
his distant hedges will he receive news of the bride that awaits him on
my study table? I venture to feel sure of it; and I am right. Here he
comes, even sooner than I expected.
On the stroke of noon, as we were sitting down to table, little Paul
who is late owing to his eager interest in what is likely to happen,
suddenly runs up to us, his cheeks aglow. In his fingers flutters a
pretty Moth, a Moth caught that moment hovering in front of my study.
Paul shows me his prize; his eyes ask an unspoken question.
“Hullo!” I say. “This is the very pilgrim we were expecting. Let’s fold
up our napkins and go and see what’s happening. We can dine later.”
Dinner is forgotten in the presence of the wonders that are taking
place. With inconceivable punctuality, the plume-wearers hasten to
answer the captive’s magic call. They arrive one by one, with a
tortuous flight. All of them come from the north. This detail has its
significance. As a matter of fact, during the past week we have
experienced a fierce return of winter. The north wind has been blowing
a gale, killing the imprudent almond-blossoms. It was one of those
ferocious storms which, as a rule, usher in the spring in our part of
the world. To-day the temperature has suddenly grown milder, but the
wind is still blowing from the north.
Now at this first visit all the Moths hurrying to the prisoner enter
the enclosure from the north; they follow the movement of the air; not
one beats against it. If their compass were a sense of smell similar to
our own, if they were guided by odoriferous particles dissolved in the
air, they ought to arrive from the opposite direction. If they came
from the south, we might believe them to be informed by effluvia
carried by the wind; coming as they do from the north, through the
mistral, that mighty sweeper of the atmosphere, how can we suppose them
to have perceived, at a great distance, what we call a smell? This
reflux of scented atoms in a direction contrary to the aerial current
seems to me inadmissible.
For a couple of hours, in radiant sunshine, the visitors come and go
outside the front of the study. Most of them search for a long while,
exploring the wall, flitting along the ground. To see their hesitation,
one would think that they were at a loss to discover the exact place of
the bait that attracts them. Though they have come from very far
without mistake, they seem uncertain of their bearings once they are on
the spot. Nevertheless, sooner or later they enter the room and pay
their respects to the captive, without much importunity. At two o’clock
all is over. Ten Moths have been here.
All through the week, each time at noon-day, when the light is at its
brightest, Moths arrive, but in decreasing numbers. The total is nearly
forty. I see no reason to repeat experiments which could add nothing to
what I already know; and I confine myself to stating two facts. In the
first place, the Lesser Peacock is a day insect, that is to say, he
celebrates his wedding in the brilliant light of the middle of the day.
He needs radiant sunshine. The Great Peacock, on the contrary, whom he
so closely resembles in his adult form and in the work which he does as
a caterpillar, requires the dusk of the early hours of the night. Let
him who can explain this strange contrast of habits.
In the second place, a powerful air-current, sweeping the other way any
particles capable of instructing the sense of smell, does not prevent
the Moths’ arriving from a direction opposite to that of the
odoriferous flux, as our physics imagine it.
If I am to go on with my observations, I want a day Moth; not the
Lesser Peacock, who made his appearance too late, at a time when I had
nothing to ask him, but another, no matter whom, provided that he be
quick at discovering nuptial feasts. Shall I find this Moth?