28 INTRODUCTION. 



male will in the shortest time be led to it by scent from 

 places miles away. If such a female is even kept shut up in 

 a room, the male, led by the smell, will come to her via the 

 chimney, as Mr. Davis observed in England in the case of 

 the Sphinx populi. The same observer, later, on the occa- 

 sion of the emergence of the females of the Phalcena 

 bucephala and P. salicis found that the window of his 

 study was besieged by males who had been attracted by the 

 smell. Herr Liiders, of Attenburgh, relates that on acci- 

 dently opening a desk, in which a female Dispar had 

 emerged a year before, a male Dispar flew in through an 

 open window, and did this several times without noticing 

 anything else in the room (Reclam, p. 312 and 313). Darwin. 

 (" Descent of Man, ed. 1875, p. 252) records after Blanchard 

 (among a number of similar observations), that M. Yerreaux, 

 in Australia, carried the female of a little Bombyx in a box 

 in his pocket and was accompanied by such a crowd of 

 males that over 200 followed him into the house. 



In this way, when they are closely looked into, are ex- 

 plained in the most natural fashion many cases of supposed 

 instinct ; in others, as in those of poultry and ducks, the 

 current stories are inaccurate. Doubtless such an exact 

 investigation as that of Dr. Stiebeling on the last-named 

 instincts, would show a similar result in apparently very 

 convincing cases, if people, instead of accepting stories on. 

 trust, would take the trouble themselves to test and observe. 

 " No one," says Wallace, "has ever taken the eggs of a bird 

 which builds a complicated nest, hatched the eggs by steam 

 or under some alien mother, and then brought the birds into 

 a large aviary, or covered place, wherein they should have 

 materials and opportunity to build a nest like their parents, 

 and then observed what kind of nest they would build. If 

 under these strict conditions they chose the same materials, 

 and the same situation, and constructed their nest in the 

 same way and as perfectly as their parents, that would show 

 instinct. But now this is only assumed, and as I shall 

 further show, is assumed without satisfactory grounds. So, 

 too, no one has ever taken the larvae of the bee out of the 

 hive, kept them apart from other bees, brought them into a 

 great enclosure with many flowers and abundant nourish- 

 ment, and then observed what kind of cell they would build. 

 But until this has been done no one can say that bees build 



