ORGANIZATION OF BUTTERFLIES

TIGER SWALLOWTAIL

LARQUIN’S ADMIRAL

Butterflies possess a remarkably perfect organization, which includes the possession of senses and a considerable measure of intelligence, when we consider the relative lowliness of their station in the scale of being. Butterflies can see. They have, as all insects have, compound eyes, made up of a number of facets, so that they can look upward, downward, forward, and backward all at the same time. Their antennæ (or feelers, as they are sometimes erroneously called) are most probably organs for smelling. Their organs for hearing, if they have any, are located upon their legs, as they are in the grasshoppers and other insects. But butterflies do not appear to be talkative, as the grasshoppers and crickets are; though some species can make curious clicking sounds, as some moths can make squeaking sounds. That they can taste is more than likely. Connected with the proboscis of butterflies, through which they suck the honey of flowers, there are, no doubt, gustatory nerves. Their brains, if the nerve-knot in the head can be so called, are not very large; but their instincts in some respects are marvelous. What, for instance, could be more wonderful than the manner in which the female butterfly, without having received a botanical education, infallibly selects the right plant upon which to lay her eggs, so that her progeny, which she never lives to see, may obtain proper nourishment? Nobody ever saw a female Swallowtail lay her eggs upon pine or clover; nobody ever saw a Cabbage butterfly lay her eggs upon other than a cruciferous plant,—either a cabbage, or one of its cousins, as plant relationships go.