94 PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY OF [Mar., 



phuretted hydrogen, nor penetrating perfumes exhaled by spike- 

 lavender, diffused through the laboratory, prevented the flocking of 

 males to the wire-gauze cage of the female. 



The removal of the antennae of the males did not settle the question 

 whether these organs were noses. A sick and sore insect cannot be 

 depended upon for the solution of problems. None of the maimed 

 males lived more than a day or two after the surgical operation. 

 Their natural span of life was too short for the recovery of normal 

 health necessary to physiological experimentation. 



In my work upon the antenna of the ant I found that this organ 

 is a compound nose, every segment being a sub-nose capable of 

 discerning a certain odor while insensitive to all other odors.- If 

 the antennae of moths and butterflies be constructed on the same 

 plan as are the antennae of the ants, each sub-nose having power 

 to discern a particular otlor, then it may be that certain species of 

 moths and butterflies possess, while other species lack, the sub-nose 

 that perceives the effluvium of the adolescent female, whose ephemeral 

 existence makes early mating necessary to the continuance of the 

 tribe. 



The result of the elision of the whole of both antennae would not 

 reveal the answer to the question concerning a sub-nose. Surgery 

 would needs be applied, segment by segment, until the sub-nose 

 discerning the female effluvium should be discovered through abnor- 

 mal behavior produced by no other cause than the elimination of 

 that particular segment. One species having antennae might possess 

 this sub-nose, while another species having antennae might lack 

 this sub-nose, and in this difference in the line or series of sub-noses 

 would lie the cause of unlike behavior in species apparently endowed 

 with similar organs of smell. 



A curious and unexplained instinct in insects generally impels 

 them to deposit their eggs upon substances that are the natural food 

 of the larvae hatched from the eggs. Since the mature insect does 

 not eat the sort of food upon which the larvae subsist and grow, and 

 since the pupa-stage, in some cases continuing many months, inter- 

 venes between the larval period and the emergence in mature form, 

 it seems improbable that memory of the gustatory joys of her own 

 larval existence or an intelligent foresight in provision for her 

 young is what induces the mother insect to deposit her eggs on the 

 nutriment required by the larvae issuing therefrom. The possession 

 of an olfactory organ, a sub-nose discerning the chemical constituents 

 of the nourishment ingested in her own earliest days, may account 

 for the habitual behavior of the insect in choosing to deposit her 

 eggs in a place that will favor the continuance of her tribe. 



The tiny truffle hunting beetle, Balhoceras gallicus,^ infallibly 

 reaching its sole food by digging a vertical tunnel of from twelve to 



2 See bibliography under " Certain vesicles found in the integument of Ants" 

 in the Proceedings for February, 1915. 



^ Fabre, Social Life in the Insect World, pp. 217-237. 



