NATURAL HISTORY NOTES 
1 69 
400. Insects and Floral Imitations. — In Knuth’s llandbookof Flower 
Pollination, just published, there occurs the following observation : “ Though 
artificial flowers may seem very realistic to human eyes, yet insects are not to Ire 
deceived, for the surface of such flowers appears quite different on close inspection 
from that of natural ones ” (p. 206). I watched a white butterfly, which had 
somehow reached High Holborn. It fluttered forsome time in front of a window 
of a china shop. There was a large vase with flowers painted upon it, in front of 
which the butterfly kept hovering. It alighted on the pane, but finding it an 
obstruction it flew away. 
G. Henslovv. 
401. Hearing 1 of Insects. — In No. 587, Mr. Yearsley rightly observes 
that the subject of the hearing of vertebrate and invertebrate animals is one 
that has occupied the pens of a “ legion of authors.” Writers on these matters 
too often lose sight of a tendency in the lower animals to take no notice, as far 
as their outward actions are concerned, of many sounds brought to bear upon 
them by experimentalists ; and, because of this indifference conclude that incapa- 
bility of hearing is the cause. It seems to me, that generally speaking, animate 
creation, from man downward, is more or less alert to certain sounds ; and so 
indifferent to others as to take little or no notice of them. Let me illustrate my 
meaning. A naturalist asks a town-bred musician to stay with him in the 
country, and takes him out for a walk. In relating their experiences in the 
evening the friend says he recognised a sonata rather badly played in one of the 
houses they had passed ; and judging by their twitter thought there must be lots 
of sparrows in the locality. He had also heard the song of what he supposed to 
be a thrush. Though blackcaps, whitethroats, and numerous other songsters had 
been singing the whole day, their notes had gone in at one ear and out at the 
other. He could not recall one of them, and hardly noticed them at all. Next 
morning, as he is in the middle of a grand piece on the piano, the naturalist comes, 
with the remark, “ You have been playing to a dull audience, I have just been 
looking at my pigs, and they snored all the time you were playing.” “Oh, the 
brutes cannot hear.” “ Can’t they though ? They woke up sharp enough when the 
meal-tub was opened.” The piano was not in the pigs’ line, but the creaking of 
the meal-tub hinge was sweet music to them. The musician goes on with his 
piano and the other settles down to his observations. He notices some cater- 
pillars of the Peacock Butterfly suddenly drop from the nettles on which they 
were reposing. A chord had been struck on the piano which caused the box in 
which they were to vibrate. They let go their hold, and fell to the ground, as is 
their habit when frightened. The sound of the music did not appeal to the 
caterpillars, or even frighten them, until the shaking made them imagine an 
enemy was at hand. This was what the naturalist thought, but he also speculated 
as to what would be the effect on them if the hum of the wing of their arch- 
enemy, an ichneumon-fly, came within measurable distance of where they were. 
During a lull in the music, the naturalist, who was looking at a death-watch in 
a pill-box, hears a faint tapping like the ticking of a watch at the other end of 
the room. In an instant the death-watch, which hitherto had been apparently 
asleep, is all life and animation, and begins to tap in a similar way. She has 
found her mate, and has heard whisperings of love. The notes of the piano 
roused no action in the death-watch, but the distant quiet tap did ; and her 
sensitive powers drank in at once the sounds she longed to hear. Mr. Yearsley 
tells us that “ The specialisation of hearing has reached • delicacy of detail 
in man which is not found in the lower vertebrates.” As far as detail is 
concerned this is no doubt true. But it is also true that many of the lower 
animals emit and hear sounds beyond the reach of the human ear. It requires 
the aid of the microphone to show us that the house-fly trumpets somewhat after 
the fashion of an elephant, and makes a noise with its feet like a horse walking 
on a road. Sounds like these are probably of great importance to the denizens 
of flydom. They force us to conclude that many animals low in the scale of 
creation communicate with each other by means- of sounds utterly beyond our 
senses and powers of imitation. No wonder, then, that they are indifferent to our 
experimental noises that are of no use, and convey no meaning to them ; and 
that these noises only rouse them to action when they cause fright or annoyance. 
Southacre, Swaffham, Edmund Thos. Daubeny. 
August, 1906. 
