And yet this lure, to which the males hasten so speedily, must saturate with its molecules an enormous hemisphere of air--a hemisphere some miles in diameter! What the atrocious fetor of the Arum cannot do the absence of odour accomplishes! However divisible matter may be, the mind refuses such conclusions.

It would be to redden a lake with a grain of carmine; to fill space with a mere nothing.
Moreover, where my laboratory was previously saturated with powerful odours which should have overcome and annihilated any particularly delicate effluvium, the male moths arrived without the least indication of confusion or delay.
A loud noise stifles a feeble note and prevents it from being heard; a brilliant light eclipses a feeble glimmer.

Heavy waves overcome and obliterate ripples.

In the two cases cited we have waves of the same nature.

But a clap of thunder does not diminish the feeblest jet of light; the dazzling glory of the sun will not muffle the slightest sound.