February igoo.] 



PSYCHE. 



19 



female, and will display no excitement 

 even though he be placed within an 

 inch of her. In five instances I dis- 

 solved the photographic paste off in 

 water, and in four of these cases the 

 males readily mated with the females. 

 Upon re-covering the antennae with the 

 paste, however, the males again failed 

 to display the least excitement wht-n 

 placed near the females. 



There can be but little doubt that 

 the organs by which the male perceives 

 the female are situated in the antennae. 

 Indeed, it has long been recognized that 

 the olfactory organs of insects are found 

 chiefly upon the antennae. Hauser, 

 iSSo, and Kraepelin, 1SS3, have given 

 excellent descriptions of the minute 

 anatomy of these organs, and Hauser 

 has carried out an elaborate series of 

 the physiological experiments to deter- 

 mine tiieir function. He cut ofl" the 

 antennae of a number of species of in- 

 sects, and found that tiieir sense of smell 

 was then either greatly impaired or 

 totally lost. Covering the antennae 

 with melted paraffin gave the same re- 

 sults. Hauser also found that when the 

 antennae of the male Saturnia pavonia 

 were removed the moth never makes 

 any attempt to mate. 



Packard, 1898, gives an excellent re- 

 view of all researches relating to the 

 anatomy and physiology of the olfac- 

 tory organs in insects. 



If the eyes of a male Callosamia 

 promethea be covered thickly with pitcii 

 or Brunswick black * so as to preclude 



• This substance is commouly used as a microscopic 

 cement, and is of a pitchy consistency and a dense brown- 

 black color. 



the possibility of sight remaining, the 

 male will still mate in a normal manner 

 if he be placed near the females. 



It will be remembered that in this 

 rnoth the male is lihtck in color, while 

 the female is reddish brown, and in ac- 

 cordance with the well known theory of 

 Darwin the peculiar coloration of the 

 male might be due to sexual selection 

 on the part of the female. We might 

 suppose, indeed, that the females pre- 

 ferred dark colored males, and thus 

 under the influence of sexual selection 

 the males became darker and darker 

 until the present melanic coloration had 

 been attained. In 1S97 the author 

 showed that the melanic coloration of 

 the male of tiiis moth is phylogenetic- 

 ally newer than the color pattern of the 

 female, and this fact, as far as it goes, 

 lends support to this theory of Dar- 

 win's. In order to test this hypoth- 

 esis I cut oft" the wings of a number 

 of females leaving only short stumps 

 from whicli all the scales were care- 

 fully brushed. Male wings were then 

 carefully glued to the stumps, and 

 thus the female presented the appear- 

 ance of a male. Under these cir- 

 cumstances the males mated with the 

 females quite as readily as they would 

 have done under normal conditions. I 

 then tried the converse experiment, and 

 glued female wings upon the males. 

 Here again, liowever, the mating 

 seemed to occur with normal frequency, 

 and I was unable to detect that the 

 females displayed any unusual aversion 

 toward their efleminate looking con- 

 sorts. It is also interesting to observe 

 that normal males pay no attention to 



