Entomological Society, 4967 



flying high over the heather, or dashing themselves incontinently against the polished 

 stems of the birches! Now I know not whether our most sagacious friend had 

 literally 'clipped the wings of Love,' but, although 'Love is (proverbially) blind,' he 

 certainly assured us that he followed these 'blind guides,' and profited by the 

 clipping, for it seems no amount of mutilation (of the wings) interferes with the 

 amorous instinct, and that these cripples continued to tumble about amongst the 

 heather and dwarf birch-trees, until they led him to female 'glories,' which he forth- 

 with impaled. Harris, Haworth and Hatchett, our guides and philosophers in 

 mothcraft, have bequeathed to us instructions how to employ maiden females as man- 

 traps to decoy the unwary and too-amorous males ; but this is the first time the male 

 has turned traitor, and lent his services to disclose the virgin's bower." 



Mr. Douglas remarked that once, at Wickhara, Messrs. Fair, Fisher and him- 

 self took females of Lasiocampa Rubi by watching the spots where the males 

 congregated. 



A Fact bearing on the Function of Antenna. 

 " It will be recollected that in an early Part of our ' Transactions' (Trans. Ent. Soc. 

 ii. 229), there is a paper by the late Mr. Newport, ' On the Use of the Antennae of 

 Insects,' in which that eminent physiologist contends that they are auditory organs. 

 We all admit that the subject is surrounded with difficulties, and therefore it is not 

 very astonishing that the learned author failed to convince many of his readers, 

 myself among the number: it has lately attracted attention from another point of 

 view. In tetrapterous insects the antennae are invariably two, but in some of the 

 apterous they are four at least ; in others they are altogether wanting, and it is an 

 interesting fact, and possibly a bit of collateral evidence in favour of the feeler hypo- 

 thesis, that where this is the case the legs are eight instead of six, and the first pair 

 actually perform the part of feelers : when we watch the spider, whose sense of touch 

 is so obvious and so exquisite as to have excited admiration in all ages, we cannot 

 resist the conviction that, whatever other function may be entrusted to them, the 

 anterior legs are certainly organs of feeling. In the Crustacea we have to deal with 

 other facts and another structure : the legs are ten instead of eight or six, and none of 

 them are either homologically or analogically the substitutes for, or representatives of, 

 antennae, since normal antennae are not only present, but are always twice, and some- 

 times three or four times, as many as in tetrapterous hexapods. Physiologists have 

 theorized very differently on the functions of these multiplied antennae. Milne- 

 Edwards considers the shorter or inner pair as auditory organs; he is confessedly 

 influenced by the supposed auditory chamber situated at their base, and he leaves the 

 exterior or longer pair to be considered olfactory or feeling organs; but Mr. Spence 

 Bate, in a paper lately published in the 'Annals' (No. 91, dated July), attempts 

 exactly to reverse this theory, contending, at great length, that the long exterior 

 antennae are auditory, the short interior ones olfactory. Recent observations on the 

 living prawn {Palcemon serratus) throw grave doubts equally over the generally received 

 view of Milne-Edwards and the more elaborately argued, but more hypothetical sug- 

 gestion of Mr. Spence Bate. The antennal system of the prawn, although familiar to 

 the Crustaceologist, is perhaps not equally so to the general entomologist, and therefore 

 a brief description may not be out of place : the antennae are eight in number ; con- 

 ventional and technical usage, — whether wisely or not who shall say ? — reduces them 

 to four: all are alike in structure, filiform and multiarticulate; the exterior on each 



