64 THE WONDERS OF INSTINCT 



good fortune may now and again procure for us. We 

 must employ the breeding-cage, which will permit of as- 

 siduous visits, continued inquiry and a variety of artifices. 

 But how populate the cage? The land of the olive-tree 

 is not rich in Necrophori. To my knowledge it possesses 

 only a single species, N. vestigator ( Hersch. ) ; and even 

 this rival of the grave-diggers of the north is pretty 

 scarce. The discovery of three or four in the course 

 of the spring was as much as my searches yielded in the 

 old days. This time, if I do not resort to the ruses of the 

 trapper, I shall obtain them in no greater numbers; 

 whereas I stand in need of at least a dozen. 



These ruses are very simple. To go in search of the 

 layer-out of bodies, who exists only here and there in 

 the country-side, would be almost always waste of time ; 

 the favorable month, April, would elapse before my cage 

 was suitably populated. To run after him is to trust too 

 much to accident ; so we will make him come to us by 

 scattering in the orchard an abundant collection of dead 

 Moles. To this carrion, ripened by the sun, the insect 

 will not fail to hasten from the various points of the 

 horizon, so accomplished is he in the detection of such a 

 delicacy. 



I make an arrangement with a gardener in the neigh- 

 borhood, who, two or three times a week, supplements 

 the penury of my acre and a half of stony ground, pro- 

 viding me with vegetables raised in a better soil. I ex- 

 plain to him my urgent need of Moles, an indefinite num- 

 .ber of moles. Battling daily with trap and spade against 

 the importunate excavator who uproots his crops, he is 



