Packard.] INSECTS OP TIIE PLANT HOUSE. 
99 
her tenderly from the rose or geranium. Confine her body 
within the animalcule box, and begin with the aid of the 
camera lucida to draw the crpature. We learn to observe 
much more rapidly and accurately by drawing the object, 
while our thoughts are more aroused by the deliberate use of 
the pencil. 
Observe the long slender feelers, or antenna*, those deli¬ 
cate tactile organs which act at once as feelers, as ears, and 
sometimes, as in the case of the carrion beetles, as noses, 
since it is by means of the sense organs lodged in the broad 
club-shaped feelers of these insects that they are enabled to 
scent their way to the carrion in which they lay their eggs. 
That they are delicate organs of touch any one can convince 
himself who observes the aphis or other insects while walk¬ 
ing. Scarcely a step is taken until the air and‘ground or 
twig on which it treads has been thoroughly explored by 
these divining rods, which never fail in imparting knowledge 
on which their owner may be said to stake its life. No one, 
however slight his knowledge of the habits of insects, will 
deny that the antennae are rightly called feelers. That the 
delicate sense of touch with which the antennae are endowed 
sometimes serves insects, in the absence of all the other 
senses, is shown in the case of the cave insects, in some of 
which the eyes are entirely wanting. It is not unfrequently 
the case that the antennae of cave insects are much longer 
and more delicate than those of their fellows which live an 
out-of-door life. Here the loss of sight has been made up 
to the insect by the increased sensibility of the feelers. 
Writers on the habits of cave insects (I refer particularly 
to the papers of the Danish naturalist, Scliiodte) describe 
the extreme caution with which they explore the ground over 
which they are about to walk, feeling and groping in the dark 
for their prey, or watching the movements of their adver¬ 
saries in this game of blind man’s bufF among the columns 
and stalactites of their grotto. 
3 
