Social Insects. 45 



of sembling, and after rearing a number of larvaa, I carefully 

 watched for the appearance of the first moths from the cocoons. 

 I kept the first moths separate and confined a virgin female in an 

 improvised wicker cage out of doors on one of the Ailanthns trees. 

 On the same evening I took a male to the old Catholic cemetery 

 on the north side, which is now a part of Lincoln Park, and let 

 him loose, having previously tied a silk thread around the base 

 of the abdomen to insure identification. The distance between 

 the captive female and the released male was at least a mile and 

 a half, and yet the next morning these two individuals were to 

 gether. 



Now in the moths of this family the male antennae are elabor 

 ately pectinate, the pectinations broad and each branch minutely 

 hairy. (See Fig. 12, a). These feelers vibrate incessantly, while 

 in the female, in which the feelers are less complex, there is a sim 

 ilar movement connected with an intense vibration of the whole 

 body and of the wings. There is therefore, every reason to believe 

 that the sense is in some way a vibratory sense, as indeed at base is 

 true of all senses, and no one can study the wonderfully diversified 

 structure of the antennas in insects, especially in males, as very 

 well exemplified in some of the commoner gnats (see Fig. 12, d, e\ 

 without feeling that they have been developed in obedience to, 

 and as a result of, some such subtle and intuitive power as this 

 of telepathy. Every minute ramification of the wonderfully 

 delicate feelers of the male Mosquito, in all probability pulsates 

 in response to the piping sounds which the female is known to 

 produce, and doubtless through considerable distance. 



There is every justification for believing that all the subtle 

 cosmic forces involved in the generation and development of the 

 highest, are equally involved in the production and building up 

 of the lowest of organisms, and that the complexing and com 

 pounding and specialization of parts have gone on in every possi 

 ble and conceivable direction according to the species. The 

 highly developed and delicate antennae in the male Ohironomus, 

 for instance, may be likened to an external brain, its ramifying 

 fibers corresponding to the highly complicated processes that 

 ramify from the nerve cells in the internal brains of higher ani 

 mals, and responding in a somewhat similar way to external im 

 pressions. While having no sort of sympathy with the foolish 

 notions that the spiritists proclaim, to edify or terrify the gulli- 



