“Not long ago I saw a striking case of this on Haldon Hill, near Exeter. The burrow opened on to a little gully, and ran back some distance under the heath. At least five paces from the nearest hole was the badger’s freshly cut shaft, about three feet deep, and around it were littered the ruins of the nest—the little tale of bloodstained fur so eloquent of tragedy. There on the earth drawn from the shaft the raider’s spoor was plain enough, but no imprint of his pads could I find upon the impressionable mould anywhere near the holes. This meant that he must have found the nest while traversing the heather—sensed it beneath him, in fact. And here an interesting point arises. What sense did he employ ? Could he possibly ‘smell’ the rabbits through three feet of packed mould ? Earth is a potent deodoriser. Do certain animals possess a sixth sense—a sympathy something akin to that of the divining rod ? If so, this goes farther to explain the much-discussed principle of scent than anything yet suggested.”
Is this sense, then, as we see it in operation in the badger, in the truffle-hunting dog, in the Bolboceros beetle, and still more wonderfully in the Peacock and Banded Monk moths, drawn to their mates “from the edge of the horizon,” and, it may be, against the wind—is this sense the same as our own sense of olfaction, only much more acute ? Fabre finds some difficulty in believing that it can really be the same. “Odour,” he argues, “is molecular diffusion.” But nothing material, nothing our senses can perceive, is emitted by these moths, and yet they can summon their mates from relatively enormous distances. However fine may be the divisibility of matter, Fabre’s mind refuses to entertain the suggestion
