188 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD 



The Great Peacock exists as a butterfly only to per- 

 petuate itself. It knows nothing of food. While so 

 many others, joyful banqueters, fly from flower to flower, 

 unrolling their spiral trunks to plunge them into honeyed 

 blossoms, this incomparable ascetic, completely freed 

 from the servitude of the stomach, has no means of 

 restoring its strength. Its buccal members are mere 

 vestiges, useless simulacra, not real organs able to 

 perform their duties. Not a sip of honey can ever 

 enter its stomach ; a magnificent prerogative, if it is 

 not long enjoyed. If the lamp is to burn it must be 

 filled with oil. The Great Peacock renounces the joys 

 of the palate ; but with them it surrenders long life. 

 Two or three nights — just long enough to allow the 

 couple to meet and mate — and all is over ; the great 

 butterfly is dead. 



What, then, is meant by the non-appearance of those 

 whose antennae I removed ? Did they prove that the 

 lack of antennae rendered them incapable of finding the 

 cage in which the prisoner waited ? By no means. Like 

 those marked with the tonsure, which had undergone no 

 damaging operation, they proved only that their time 

 was finished. Mutilated or intact, they could do no 

 more on account of age, and their absence meant nothing. 

 Owing to the delay inseparable from the experiment, the 

 part played by the antennae escaped me. It was doubtful 

 before; it remained doubtful. 



My prisoner under the wire-gauze cover lived for 

 eight days. Every night she attracted a swarm of 

 visitors, now to one part of the house, now to another. 

 I caught them with the net and released them as soon as 

 captured in a closed room, where they passed the night. 



