39 
hearing in the ordinary 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 iDower of sembling among certain moths, for instance, especially 
those of the family Bombycida?, 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 power, 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. Capron, eggs of Samia cy?ithia, the Ailanthus silk- 
worm of Japan, which had been recently introduced by him. I 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 larvae 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 previously 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. 
Xow, in the moths of this family the male antenna; 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 aud of the wings. 
There is, therefore, every reason 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 antenna' in 
insects, especially in males, as very well exemplified in some of the 
commoner gnats (see Fig. 14, (?, e), without feeling that they have been 
developed in obedience to, and as a result of, some such subtle and 
intuitive power as this of telepathy. Every minute ramification of the 
