The Life of the Caterpillar 



insect could not have made straighter for the 

 coveted object had it been guided by sight; 

 it always digs at the foot of the straws, my 

 sign-posts. The Dog, nosing the ground for 

 truffles, hardly achieves this degree of pre- 

 cision. 



Has the hydnocystis then a very pungent 

 smell, able to give such positive information 

 to its consumer's scent? Not at all. To our 

 nostrils it is a neutral object, devoid of any 

 appreciable olfactory character. A tiny peb- 

 ble taken out of the ground would impress us 

 just as much with its faint aroma of fresh 

 earth. As a revealer of underground fungous 

 products, the Bolboceras here rivals the Dog. 

 He would even rise superior to the Dog, were 

 he able to generalize. But he is a rigorous 

 specialist : he knows only the hydnocystis. No- 

 thing else, so far as I am aware, tempts him 

 to dig. 1 



Both of them search the subsoil very 

 closely, at the level of the ground; and the 

 object which they seek is not far down. Were 

 they farther away, neither the Dog nor the in- 



1 Since writing the above lines, I have found him 

 eating one of the true Tuberaceae, Tuber Requienii, TUL., 

 the size of a cherry. Author's Note. 



318 



