occasion, however, while watching a Peacock Butterfly apparently engaged in cleaning its divided proboscis, I observed that this organ was frequently passed under the thorax, and that the front pair of legs were pressed against it on each side, while it was being drawn outward between them. It is probable, therefore, that these limbs constitute a pair of brushes by means of which the fine grooves of the divided trunk are cleared of any solid or sticky matter that may lodge therein. It is certain that moths, and those butterflies that possess six equal legs, use the front pair for this same purpose. The former, also, employ them for brushing their antennæ, which seem to be, by the way, particularly sensitive to different kinds of irritation.
It is a well-known fact that tobacco smoke has a powerful influence on certain small insects; and even though it can hardly be regarded as a perfect all-round insecticide, it is certainly more or less objectionable to the larger and hardier species. A short time since, while watching a number of newly emerged moths of the Sphinx group, and at the same time enjoying the solace afforded by the luxurious weed, a puff of the smoke was accidentally allowed to play into the box in which my pets were for the time imprisoned. Immediately they rubbed their front legs vigorously over the antennæ, as if to remove the obnoxious irritant that had thus intruded on their presence. Similar observations have led many naturalists to suppose that the antennæ are the seat of various senses, such as those of touch, hearing, and smell. Seeing that insects do not, as far as we know, possess special organs for all the five senses which we enjoy (and it is interesting to note here that some insects certainly experience other sensations which are quite beyond our ken), we can quite understand the common tendency to locate the seats of certain of the senses in such easily affected parts as the antennæ. But little, I believe, has been definitely proved save that the antennæ are sensitive to touch and to irritants generally.
While speaking of the senses of insects, I cannot refrain from mentioning a most remarkable example of a peculiar sensitiveness that has been observed in certain moths of the family Bombyces ([page 217])—notably the Oak Eggar, the Emperor, and the Kentish Glory. Take a newly emerged female of either of these species, shut her up in a small box, conceal the box in your pocket, and then
walk about in some country spot known to you as being one of the haunts of that species of moth. Then, if any of the males of the same species happen to be in the neighbourhood, they will settle or hover about close to the female which, although still concealed and quite out of their reach, has attracted them to the spot.
What a marvellously acute sense this must be, that thus enables the insects to scent out, as it were, their mates at considerable distances, even when doubly surrounded by a wooden box and the material of a coat pocket! You would naturally expect that entomologists have turned this wonderful power to account. Many a box has been filled with the beautiful Kentish Glories of the male kind, who had been led into the snare by the attractions of a virgin Glory that they were never to behold. Many an Emperor has also been decoyed from his throne to the place of his execution, beguiled by the imaginary charms of an Empress on whom he was never to cast one passing glance. And these and other similar captures have been made in places where, without the employment of the innocent enchantress, perhaps not a single male could have been found, even after the most diligent search.
Speaking of this surprising sense, I am again tempted to revert to the antennæ; for it is a remarkable fact that the males of those species of moths which exhibit the power of thus searching out their mates, are just those that are also remarkable for their very broad and deeply pectinated antennæ—a fact that has led to the supposition that the power in question is located in the antennæ, and is also proportional to the amount of surface displayed by these organs.
Up to the present time we have been considering the butterfly and moth in their perfect forms, but everybody knows that the former is not always a butterfly, nor is the latter always a moth; but that they both pass through certain preparatory stages before they attain their final winged state.
We shall now notice briefly what these earlier stages are, leaving the detailed descriptions of each for the following chapters.
The life of the perfect butterfly or moth is of very short duration, often only a few days, nearly the whole of its existence having been spent in preparing itself for the brief term to be enjoyed
... in fields of light,
And where the flowers of Paradise unfold.