39 



hearing in the ordinarj' understanding of these senses, but rather on 

 certain subtle vibrations as difficult for us to apprehend as is the exact 

 nature of electricity. The fact that man can telegraphically transmit 

 sound almost instantaneously around the globe, and that his very speech 

 may be telephonically transmitted, as quickly as uttered, for thousands 

 of miles may suggest something of this subtle power even though it 

 furnish no explanation thereof. 



The power of sembling among certain moths, for instance, especially 

 those of the family Bombycidiie, is well known to entomologists, and 

 many remarkable instances are recorded. I am tempted to put on 

 record for the first time an individual experience which very well illus- 

 trates this i)ower, as on a number of occasions when I have narrated 

 it most persons not familiar with the general facts have deemed it 

 remarkable. In 18G3 I obtained from the then Commissioner of 

 Agriculture, Col. Gapron, eggs of Samia cynthia, the Ailanthus silk- 

 worm of Japan, which had been recently introduced by him. 1 was 

 living on East Madison Street, in Chicago, at the time, a part of 

 the city subsequently swept by the great fire and since entirely trans- 

 formed. In the front yard, which (so commonly the case in the old 

 Chicago days) was below the sidewalk, there grew two Ailanthus 

 trees which were the cause of my sending for the aforesaid eggs. I 

 had every reason to believe that there were no other eggs of this species 

 received in any part of the country within hundreds of miles around. 

 It seemed a good opportunity to test the power of this sembling, and 

 after rearing a number of larvtE 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 Ailanthus 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 ])reviously 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 

 together. 



J^ow, in the moths of this family the male antennae are elaborately 

 pectinate, the pectinations broad and each branch minutely hairy. 

 (See Fig. 14, a.) These feelers vibrate incessantly, while in the female 

 in which the feelers are less complex there is a similar movement con- 

 nected with an intense vibration of the whole body and of the wings. 

 There is, therefore, every i-easou 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 antennjie in 

 insects, especially in males, as very well exemplified in some of the 

 commoner gnats (see Fig. 14, d, e), without feeling that they have been 

 developed in obedience to, and as a result of, some such subtle and 

 intuitive iDower as this of telepathy. Every minute ramification of the 



