Note 1 — Chapter XIII · THE SENSE OF SMELL

A wretched caterpillar, the Pine Processionary, splits his back into meteorological air-holes which snuff the coming weather and foretell the squall; the bird of prey, with its incomparably long sight, sees from high in the clouds the Field-mouse squatting on the ground; the blinded Bats guide their flight without injury to themselves amid Spallanzani’s1 inextricable maze of threads; the Carrier-pigeon, though moved a hundred leagues from home, infallibly regains his cote across immensities which he has never traversed unaided; within the limits of her humbler flight, a Bee, the Chalicodoma,2 also spans the unknown, accomplishes a long journey and returns to her mass of cells.