INSECT VARIETY. . 65 



round its apex^ Leg-an to methodically attach her oval and 

 shagreened eggs to the underside, close to the midrib. She 

 could distinguish Souchong from Pekoe. 



The males of the small sylvan dancing moths, like their 

 watery trichopterous relatives, have long and thread-like an- 

 tennae. The crickets also have them elongate, and in the 

 grasshoppers they are sometimes clubbed ; so also of the 

 Neuroptera. In the flies and the Cicadse they are short, and 

 the former have them dilated. In the bees they are often 

 elongate, and appear to be used for smelling. The wasps when 

 feeding vibrate tacitly their thick antennae, and Ichneiamon 

 flies, as Foenits jacidator (Fabr.), when searching a nidus for their 

 ova, also vibrate their much longer organs, and aj)ply them 

 to the holes where they afterwards insert their ovipositor. 

 Lehmann has further attributed to the antennae a faculty of 

 aeroscopy, or power of discovering the state of the weather ; and 

 Kirby tells us, on the authority of the j^oet Southey, that keen 

 scent in crickets informs them of the well-known odours of 

 mother-earth, even when wafted across the salt and dreary ocean. 

 Thus on the approach of the ship Cabeza de Vaca to the coast 

 of Brazil, the proximity of land was inferred, and, as the result 

 proved, truly, from a Ground-cricket which a soldier had 

 brought from Cadiz then beginning again to sing. 



But in order that the antennse should be olfactory organs 

 a special organisation is necessary. Straus-Diirckheim in 18^8 

 remarked their constant presence, and alludes to the nerve- 

 branches that enter them, fitting them for the localisation of 

 a sense; and Newport in 1838 notices these nerves, and also the 

 tracheal offshoots which penetrate them and ramify at every 

 joint, adapting them, as these authorities consider, for organs of 

 hearing. Erichson next, in IS-l?, observes them to be covered 

 with variously-disposed pores, closed at the bottom by a thin 

 membrane ; and Vogt, 1851, notices the pores and closing 

 membrane, which appeared to him clothed with numerous hairs. 

 These authorities differ from the former in attributing to them 

 touch and smell. Then Lespes in 1858 observes the pores, 

 and mentions otoliths in connection, which Claparede, in 

 1858, says are tubes. Dr. Hicks, lastly, refutes Lespes as to 

 the presence of the otoliths, but still considers the function of 



