Page:Dan McKenzie - Aromatics and the Soul.pdf/37

Rh food, but we do not yet know much about this particular organism.

It is otherwise with the olfaction of insects. Here the work of painstaking observers like Lubbock, Fabre, and Forel, has supplied us with a mass of information of the utmost interest, which we shall now proceed to discuss in some detail, commencing with the work of that remarkable French naturalist, Fabre, whose interest in the subject was aroused by an accident—the accident of which the genius of observation knows so well how to take advantage.

Having by chance a living female Great Peacock moth captive in his house, Fabre was surprised one night by the advent of some forty others of the same species—males in search of a mate. At once the question arose in his mind : How was it that they had been attracted ?

Sight could not have guided them, because, apart from the comparative rarity of this moth in that particular district, the night of their arrival was dark and stormy, his house was screened by trees and shrubs, and the female was ensconced under a gauze cover. He observed, besides, that the males did not make straight for their objective, as is characteristic of movement when directed by sight. They blundered and went astray, some