104 SUMMER 



muslin cage, and set down in the morning sunshine on a 

 heath which the species frequent, males will dash up, and 

 with the utmost eagerness attempt to reach her in the cage. 

 They are perfectly heedless of danger, and can be caught 

 with ease as they crawl over the muslin. Remarkable 

 accounts have been published of the way in which a collector 

 carrying a live moth in his pocket was beset by the male 

 emperors, some of which actually crawled into his pocket in 

 pursuit. The fact that the males travel up wind when they 

 are drawn by the female suggests that the message is 

 conveyed by scent ; but the female emperor has no such 



FEMALE EMPEROR 



scent perceptible to the human sense of smell as is possessed 

 by the males of the common and green-veined whites, and 

 the explanation is no more than a probable conjecture. It is 

 even harder to give precise form to the suggestion that some 

 form of atmospheric vibration, like wireless telegraphy, is set 

 up by the female, which the males detect by means of their 

 unusually elaborate antennae. These are broad and deeply 

 fringed, like a fern. Many moths of the tribe to which the 

 emperor belongs show a similar difference between the 

 simple, threadlike form of the antennae in the female, and a 

 fringed pattern in the male, and is possible that they all possess 

 the power of signalling to the male in a less degree, but that 



