The worthy man who lent himself with such good grace to my strange requirements will never guess how much comparative psychology will owe him! In a few days I was the possessor of thirty Moles, which were scattered here and there, as they reached me, in bare portions of the orchard, amid the rosemary-bushes, the arbutus-trees, and the lavender-beds.
Now it only remained to wait and to examine, several times a day, the under-side of my little corpses, a disgusting task which any one would avoid who had not the sacred fire in his veins.

Only little Paul, of all the household, lent me the aid of his nimble hand to seize the fugitives.

I have already stated that the entomologist has need of simplicity of mind.

In this important business of the Necrophori, my assistants were a child and an illiterate.
Little Paul's visits alternating with mine, we had not long to wait.
The four winds of heaven bore forth in all directions the odour of the carrion; and the undertakers hurried up, so that the experiments, begun with four subjects, were continued with fourteen, a number not attained during the whole of my previous searches, which were unpremeditated and in which no bait was used as decoy.

My trapper's ruse was completely successful.
Before I report the results obtained in the cage, let us for a moment stop to consider the normal conditions of the labours that fall to the lot of the Necrophori.