The Life of the Caterpillar 



case as well as mine, there is really here what 

 our language calls a smell. 



I can do better still with the flower of the 

 dragon arum {Arum dracunctilus) , so re- 

 markable for its shape and for its unequalled 

 stench. Imagine a wide, lanceolate blade, of 

 a clarety purple, half a yard long and rolled 

 below into an ovoid pouch the size of a hen's 

 egg. Through the opening of this wallet 

 rises a central column springing from the bot- 

 tom, a long, bright-green club, encircled at its 

 base by two bracelets, one of ovaries, the 

 other of stamens. Such, briefly described, is 

 the flower, or rather the inflorescence, of the 

 dragon arum. 



For two days it exhales a frightful stench 

 of carrion, worse than the proximity of a 

 dead Dog would yield. During the hottest 

 part of the day, with a wind blowing, it is 

 loathsome, unbearable. Let us brave the in- 

 fected atmosphere and go up to it; we shall 

 behold a curious sight. 



Informed by the foul odour, which spreads 

 far and wide, various insects come flying 

 along, such insects as make sausage-meat of 

 small corpses — Toads, Adders, Lizards, 

 Hedgehogs, Moles, Field-mice — which the 



320 



