to get well, he will
recover his strength; the poor victim of the curiosity of science will be
restored to liberty. This is the wish, the intention of us all. Twelve
hours later, the hope of a cure increases; the invalid takes nourishment
readily; he clamours for it, if we keep him waiting. But the leg still
drags. I set this down to a temporary paralysis which will soon
disappear. Two days after, he refuses his food. Wrapping himself in his
stoicism and his rumpled feathers, the Sparrow hunches into a ball, now
motionless, now twitching. My girls take him in the hollow of their
hands and warm him with their breath. The spasms become more frequent. A
gasp proclaims that all is over. The bird is dead.

There was a certain coolness among us at the evening-meal. I read mute
reproaches, because of my experiment, in the eyes of my home-circle; I
read an unspoken accusation of cruelty all around me. The death of the
unfortunate Sparrow had saddened the whole family. I myself was not
without some remorse of conscience: the poor result achieved seemed to me
too dearly bought. I am not made of the stuff of those who, without
turning a hair, rip up live Dogs to find out nothing in particular.

Nevertheless, I had the courage to start afresh, this time on a Mole
caught ravaging a bed of lettuces. There was a danger lest my captive,
with his famished stomach, should leave things in doubt, if we had to
keep him for a few days. He might die not of his wound, but of
inanition, if I did not succeed in giving him suitable food, fairly
plentiful and dispensed at fairly frequent intervals. In that case, I
ran a risk of ascribing to the poison what might well be the result of
starvation. I must therefore begin by finding out if it was possible for
me to keep the Mole alive in captivity. The animal was put into a large
receptacle from which it could not get out and fed on a varied diet of
insects--Beetles, Grasshoppers, especially Cicadae {15}--which it
crunched up with an excellent appetite. Twenty-four hours of this
regimen convinced me that the Mole was making the best of the bill of
fare and taking kindly to his captivity.

I make the Tarantula bite him at the tip of the snout. When replaced in
his cage, the Mole keeps on scratching his nose with his broad paws. The
thing seems to burn, to itch. Henceforth, less and less of the provision
of Cicadae is consumed; on the evening of the following day, it is
refused