The Sense of Smell 



His master, a celebrated rabassier^ in the 

 village, convinced that I had no intention of 

 stealing his secrets and one day setting up in 

 competition, allowed me to join him in his 

 expeditions, a favour which he did not often 

 grant. The worthy man was quite willing to 

 fall in with my views, once he saw that I was 

 not an apprentice but merely an enquirer who 

 made drawings 2 and wrote down lists of un- 

 derground vegetable things, instead of mar- 

 keting my bagful of treasure-trove, the glory 

 of the Christmas Turkey. 



It was agreed between us that the Dog 

 should act as he pleased and receive a bit of 

 bread as his reward after each discovery, in- 

 discriminately. Every spot scratched up by 

 his paws was to be dug and the object indi- 

 cated extracted without our troubling about 

 its commercial value. In no case was the 

 master's experience to intervene and divert 

 the dog from a spot where practice told him 



^Rabasso is the Provengal for truffle. Hence the 

 word rabassier to denote a truffle-hunter. Author's 

 Note. 



2 For some account of Fahre's drawings of the fungi 

 of his district, cf. The Life of the Fly, by J. Henri 

 Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos : 

 chap. xvii. Translator's Note. 



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