The Life of the Spider 



seemed to me too dearly bought. I am not 

 made of the stuff of those who, without turn- 

 ing a hair, rip up Live dogs to find out noth- 

 ing in particular. 



Neverthelss, I had the courage to start 

 afresh, this time on a Mole caught ravaging 

 a bed of lettuces. There was a danger lest 

 my captive, with his famished stomach, 

 should leave things in doubt, if we had to 

 keep him for a few days. He might die 

 not of his wound, but of inanition, if I did 

 not succeed in giving him suitable food, 

 fairly plentiful and dispensed at fairly fre- 

 quent intervals. In that case, I ran a risk 

 of ascribing to the poison what might well 

 be the result of starvation. I must therefore 

 begin by finding out if it was possible for me 

 to keep the Mole alive in captivity. The ani- 

 mal was put into a large receptacle from 

 which it could not get out and fed on a varied 

 diet of insects — Beetles, Grasshoppers, es- 

 pecially Cicadae 1 — which it crunched up with 

 an excellent appetite. Twenty-four hours of 

 this regimen convinced me that the Mole was 



'The Cicada is the Cigale, an insect akin to the Grass- 

 hopper and found more particularly in the South of 

 France. — Translator's Note. 



74 



