them is so delicious; they roll down its
steep face and are engulfed in the capsule. After a few hours of hot
sunlight the receptacle is full.

Let us look into the capsule through the narrow opening. Nowhere else
could you see such a mob of insects. It is a delirious mixture of backs
and bellies, wing-covers and legs, which swarms and rolls upon itself,
rising and falling, seething and boiling, shaken by continual
convulsions, clicking and squeaking with a sound of entangled
articulations. It is a bacchanal, a general access of delirium tremens.

A few, but only a few, emerge from the mass. By the central mast or the
walls of the purse they climb to the opening. Do they wish to take
flight and escape? By no means. On the threshold of the cavity, while
already almost at liberty, they allow themselves to fall into the
whirlpool, retaken by their madness. The lure is irresistible. None will
break free from the swarm until the evening, or perhaps the next day,
when the heady fumes will have evaporated. Then the units of the swarm
disengage themselves from their mutual embraces, and slowly, as though
regretfully, take flight and depart. At the bottom of this devil's purse
remains a heap of the dead and dying, of severed limbs and wing-covers
torn off; the inevitable sequels of the frantic orgy. Soon the woodlice,
earwigs, and ants will appear to prey upon the injured.

What are these insects doing? Were they the prisoners of the flower,
converted into a trap which allowed them to enter but prevented their
escape by means of a palisade of converging hairs? No, they were not
prisoners; they had full liberty to escape, as is proved by the final
exodus, which is in no way impeded. Deceived by a fallacious odour, were
they endeavouring to lay and establish their eggs as they would have
done under the shelter of a corpse? No; there is no trace of eggs in the
purse of the Arum. They came convoked by the odour of a decaying body,
their supreme delight; an intoxication seized them, and they rushed into
the eddying swarm to take part in a festival of carrion-eaters.

I was anxious to count the number of those attracted. At the height of
the bacchanal I emptied the purse into a bottle. Intoxicated as they
were, many would escape my census, and I wished to ensure its accuracy.
A few drops of carbon bisulphide quieted the swarm. The census proved
that there were more than four hundred insects in the purse of the Arum.
The collection