For two days it exhales a frightful stench of carrion, worse than the proximity of a dead Dog would yield. During the hottest part of the day, with a wind blowing, it is loathsome, unbearable. Let us brave the infected atmosphere and go up to it; we shall behold a curious sight.
Informed by the foul odour, which spreads far and wide, various insects come flying along, such insects as make sausage-meat of small corpses—Toads, Adders, Lizards, Hedgehogs, Moles, Field-mice—which the [[321]]husbandman hits with his spade and flings away disembowelled on the foot-path. They swoop down upon the great leaf, which, with its livid purple, looks like a strip of meat gone bad; they caper about, intoxicated by the smell of corpse which they love; they roll down the slope and are swallowed up in the purse. After a few hours of bright sunshine, the receptacle is full.
Let us look inside, through the narrow opening. No elsewhere could you see such a crowd. It is a mad whirl of backs and bellies, of wing-cases and legs, swarming, rolling over and over, amid the snap of interlocked joints, rising and falling, floating and sinking, seething and bubbling without end. It is a drunken revel, an epidemic of delirium tremens.
Some, few as yet, emerging from the mass, climb to the opening by means of the central pole or the walls of the enclosure. Will they take wing and make their escape? Not they! Standing on the brink of the chasm, almost free, they drop back into the whirlpool, in a fresh bout of intoxication. The bait is irresistible. Not one of [[322]]them will quit the assembly until the evening, or perhaps next morning, when the heady fumes have evaporated. Then the mass becomes disentangled; and the insects extricate themselves from one another’s embraces and slowly, as it were regretfully, leave the place and fly away. At the bottom of this devil’s purse remains a heap of dead and dying, of severed limbs and disjointed wing-cases, the inevitable result of the frenzied orgy. Soon, Wood-lice, Earwigs and Ants will arrive and devour the deceased.
What were they doing there? Were they the prisoners of the flower? Had it converted itself into a trap which allowed them to enter, but prevented them from escaping, by means of a fence of converging hairs? No, they were not prisoners; they had full liberty to go away, as is shown by the final exodus, which is effected without impediment. Deceived by a false odour, were they doing their best to instal their eggs, as they would have done under a corpse? Not that either. There is no trace of an attempt at egg-laying in the dragon’s purse. They came, enticed by the smell of a dead body, their supreme delight; they were drunk with corpse; [[323]]and they spun round frantically in an undertakers’ carnival.
When the bacchanal dance is at its height, I try to count the number of the arrivals. I rip up the floral pouch and pour its contents into a flask. Absolutely tipsy though they be, many would escape during the census, which I wish to take accurately. A few drops of carbon bisulphide deprive the crowd of motion. The counting then shows that there were over four hundred. Such was the living billow which I saw surging just now in the dragon’s purse.
The throng consists entirely of two families, Dermestes and Saprini,[14] both of whom are very busy in spring turning derelict corpses to account. Here is a complete list of the visitors to a single flower, with the number of representatives of each species: Dermestes Frischii, Kugel., 120; D. undulatus, Brahm, 90; D. pardalis, Schoenh., 1; Saprinus subnitidus, De Mars., 160; S. maculatus, Ross., 4; S. detersus, Illig., 15; S. semipunctatus, De Mars., 12; S. œneus, Fabr., 2; S. speculifer, Latr., 2. Total: 406. [[324]]
Another detail deserves attention just as much as this enormous figure; and that is the complete absence of a number of other genera which are as passionately fond of small corpses as are the Dermestes and Saprini. My charnel-houses of Moles never fail to be visited by the Silphæ and Necrophori: Silpha sinuata, Fabr.; S. rugosa, Lin.; S. obscura, Lin.; Necrophorus vestigator, Hersch. The reek of the dragon arum leaves them all indifferent. None of them is represented in the ten flowers which I examine.
Nor are any Diptera, those other devotees of corruption. Several Flies, some grey or bluey, others a metallic green, come up, it is true, settle on the edge of the flower and even find their way into the fetid wallet; but they are almost immediately undeceived and fly away. Only the Dermestes and Saprini stay behind. Why?
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 [[325]]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.