BOLBOCERAS AMERICANUS MULS
HABITAT HERE!
He studied it while his match burned out. He knit his brows, puzzled, groping after blind thoughts, little moles of thoughts deep in dark burrows.
He let himself in. The others were asleep.
The Worm, in his odd humors, never lacked point or meaning. The placard meant something, of course... something that Peter could use....
The Worm had been reading—that rather fat book lying even now on the arm of the Morris 'chair It was Fabre, on Insect Life.
He snatched it up and turned the pages. He sought the index for that word. There it was—Bolbuceras, page 225. Back then to page 225!
He read:
“... a pretty little black beetle, with a pale, velvety abdomen... Its official title is Bulbuceras Gallicus Muls.”
He looked up, in perplexity. This was hardly self-explanatory. He read on. The bolboceras, it began to appear, was a hunter of truffles. Truffles it would, must have. It would eat no common food but wandered about sniffing out its vegetable prey in the sandy soil and digging for each separate morsel, then moving on in its quest. It made no permanent home for itself.