
796 THE AMERICAN NATURALIST. | [Vor. XXXVI. 
especially such as are wingless among the females, or which, 
having wings, do not readily use them? If we trap insects by 
baits or by lights, we find that our catches will be largely of 
males or spent females, thus showing that, generally speaking, 
the male seeks the female. In the cases of some of our hyme- 
nopters and especially where males do not, or rarely, occur, 
and with others, like the Aphides, where the males only occur 
at a single definite time, this rule will not hold good, and our 
captures will be all of them females; and I think it is among 
such that will be found those that give themselves most freely 
to the embraces of the winds during the breeding seasons. 
The influence of the winds in enabling insects to detect the 
location of their food is apparent in many ways. If we place 
the dead body of a bird, snake, or small animal under a bell 
glass in the fields, no carrion-loving insects will come to it; 
but if we substitute for the bell glass a wire cage, these will 
soon find their way to it, coming against and not with the 
wind. The two species of dung beetles, Aphodius inguinatus 
and A. serval, which appear, the one in the fall and the other 
in the spring, quickly find the fresh droppings of animals by 
aid of the wind. The plum curculio, Conotrachelus nenuphar, 
is said to approach a plum orchard more readily against the 
wind than with it, as has been determined by painting indi- 
viduals and liberating them to the windward and leeward of a 
plum orchard just at the season for oviposition; and there is 
little doubt but that many of our wood-boring beetles are 
enabled to select a weakened tree by their acute sense of 
smell. Thus do the light winds enable many insects the better 
to find their food and each other, thereby greatly increasing 
their numbers in any given place. 
The high winds and gales, unaccompanied by rain, thunder, 
and lightning, also exert a powerful influence in the diffusion 
of insects. But before taking up the direct subject of influ- 
ences of high winds exclusively, it may be well to call attention 
to some of the effects of prevailing winds, that is, winds both 
light and heavy but which come most continuously from one 
direction during the period when insect diffusion is most sus- 
ceptible to their influences. A most convincing illustration in 
