214 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD 



metal. All these objects, after a contact of sufficient 

 duration, had the same attraction for the males as the 

 female moth herself. They retained this property for 

 a longer or shorter time, according to their nature. 

 Cardboard, flannel, dust, sand, and porous objects 

 retained it longest. Metals, marble, and glass, on the 

 contrary, quickly lost their efficacy. Finally, any- 

 thing on which the female had rested communicated its 

 virtues by contact ; witness the butterflies crowding on 

 the straw-bottomed chair after the twig fell to the ground. 



Using one of the most favourable materials — flannel, 

 for example — I witnessed a curious sight. I placed a 

 morsel of flannel on which the mother moth had been 

 lying all the morning at the bottom of a long test-tube or 

 narrow-necked bottle, just permitting of the passage of a 

 male moth. The visitors entered the vessels, struggled, 

 and did not know how to extricate themselves. I had 

 devised a trap by means of which I could exterminate 

 the tribe. Delivering the prisoners, and removing the 

 flannel, which I placed in a perfectly closed box, I found 

 that they re-entered the trap ; attracted by the effluvia 

 that the flannel had communicated to the glass. 



I was now convinced. To call the moths of the 

 countryside to the wedding-feast, to warn them at a 

 distance and to guide them the nubile female emits an 

 odour of extreme subtlety, imperceptible to our own 

 olfactory sense-organs. Even with their noses touching 

 the moth, none of my household has been able to 

 perceive the faintest odour ; not even the youngest, 

 whose sensibility is as yet unvitiated. 



This scent readily impregnates any object on which 

 the female rests for any length of time, when this object 



