I determined next time to take suitable precautions and to make all preparations for repeating at will the experiments already made and others which I had in mind. I set to work at once, without delay.
In the summer I began to buy caterpillars at a halfpenny apiece.
The market was in the hands of some neighbouring urchins, my habitual providers. On Friday, free of the terrors of grammar, they scoured the fields, finding from time to time the Great Peacock caterpillar, and bringing it to me clinging to the end of a stick. They did not dare to touch it, poor little imps! They were thunderstruck at my audacity when I seized it in my fingers as they would the familiar silkworm.
Reared upon twigs of the almond-tree, my menagerie soon provided me with magnificent cocoons. In winter assiduous search at the base of the native trees completed my collection. Friends interested in my researches came to my aid. Finally, after some trouble, what with an open market, commercial negotiations, and searching, at the cost of many scratches, in the undergrowth, I became the owner of an assortment of cocoons of which twelve, larger and heavier than the rest, announced that they were those of females.
Disappointment awaited me. May arrived; a capricious month which set my preparations at naught, troublesome as these had been. Winter returned. The mistral shrieked, tore the budding leaves of the plane-trees, and scattered them over the ground. It was cold as December. We had to light fires in the evening, and resume the heavy clothes we had begun to leave off.
My butterflies were too sorely tried. They emerged late and were torpid. Around my cages, in which the females waited—to-day one, to-morrow another, according to the order of their birth—few males or none came from without. Yet there were some in the neighbourhood, for those with large antennæ which issued from my collection of cocoons were placed in the garden directly they had emerged, and were recognised. Whether neighbours or strangers, very few came, and those without enthusiasm. For a moment they entered, then disappeared and did not reappear. The lovers were as cold as the season.
Perhaps, too, the low temperature was unfavourable to the informing effluvia, which might well be increased by heat and lessened by cold as is the case with many odours. My year was lost. Research is disappointing work when the experimenter is the slave of the return and the caprices of a brief season of the year.
For the third time I began again. I reared caterpillars; I scoured the country in search of cocoons. When May returned I was tolerably provided. The season was fine, responding to my hopes. I foresaw the affluence of butterflies which had so impressed me at the outset, when the famous invasion occurred which was the origin of my experiments.
Every night, by squadrons of twelve, twenty, or more, the visitors appeared. The female, a strapping, big-bellied matron, clung to the woven wire of the cover. There was no movement on her part; not even a flutter of the wings. One would have thought her indifferent to all that occurred. No odour was emitted that was perceptible to the most sensitive nostrils of the household; no sound that the keenest ears of the household could perceive. Motionless, recollected, she waited.
The males, by twos, by threes and more, fluttered upon the dome of the cover, scouring over it quickly in all directions, beating it continually with the ends of their wings. There were no conflicts between rivals. Each did his best to penetrate the enclosure, without betraying any sign of jealousy of the others. Tiring of their fruitless attempts, they would fly away and join the dance of the gyrating crowd. Some, in despair, would escape by the open window: new-comers would replace them: and until ten o'clock or thereabouts the wire dome of the cover would be the scene of continual attempts at approach, incessantly commencing, quickly wearying, quickly resumed.