The concerted odours of a gas-works, a smoking-room, a perfumery, a petroleum well, and a chemical factory--would they succeed in confusing the male moths?
By no means.

About three o'clock the moths arrived in as great numbers as usual.

They went straight to the cage, which I had covered with a thick cloth in order to add to their difficulties.

Seeing nothing when once they had entered, and immersed in an extraordinary atmosphere in which any subtle fragrance should have been annihilated, they nevertheless made straight for the prisoner, and attempted to reach her by burrowing under the linen cloth.

My artifice had no result.
After this set-back, so obvious in its consequences, which only repeated the lesson of the experiments made with naphthaline when my subject was the Great Peacock, I ought logically to have abandoned the theory that the moths are guided to their wedding festivities by means of strongly scented effluvia.