INSECTS AND WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 282, 17 August 1918, Page 8

INSECTS AND WIRELESS TELEGRAPHY

A MYSTERIOUS WONDEK. (By/H. Knight Horsfieltl, in the "Daily Mail.") On,e of the many mysteries of insect ■Hilt is the manner in which the sexes oi' certain species contrive to communicate with one another at long distances. The story of the Oak Eggar moth has all tho qualities of a fairy-tale. When the maiden omerges from the cocoon she may find, herself imprisoned in the chin bos; of the naturalist, it may be, , m the l\eaVt of a smoky town, many miles from tho haunts of. her kin. Nevertheless, she at once nnnounces her advent to isr possible swains, then hovering over (jhfi 'far-away moorland. How is tho communication made? By what m.aiiiMr of wireless telegraphy is the message sent which is responded to instantly by the Eggar gnl/liuiits, 'who dfet their 'fragrant habitat, bjAvo every obstacle, ignore adverse winds, sjiapo their course through a tetrange ami dusky, wilderness of bricks and mortar, find ' the identical house, and, at length, laughing at locksmiths, cluster in masses around the tiny prison Tvheroin, tho young princess is interned? Tha facts are unquestioned: experiments designed ,tp bring about these "as*mblings," and to test the distances

nho mules will travel are well known to all entomologist. Biifc the main question, the manner of communjcation. re--sunin6 to be nnsivfred. Dnrwiu, Wallace, Bay Lankcstcr, nil the great ones, indeed, are silent, or at best inconclusive.

F.ibre, the insects' Homer, with his infinite capacity for taking pains, devoted long periods to devising tests that should £iifc least wring their secret from the •breasts of the knightly Oak Eggars. He abandoned, of course, any hypotheses based on the faculties of srjht and hearying; 'the senso of smell appeared to be tho only line of, correspondence open. ,-Bnt is the sense of smell tenable tn a theory? We know that odoriferous particles are carried on the wind; they <lo not fly.ngainst it for any great distance. We, kiftw that very powerful odours will -'conflict with and overpower any weaker .ones; a fox may destroy liis own fatal •taint by mingling with a flock of sheep. One. these lines Tabre worked.

He tells us &e made his study a very fcharnel house of horrible stenches; still /tho Ouk EgSijrs came to gather passionately about their idol's gaol. Nevertheless. Fabre himself seems finally to lean to the , scent theory, but he plainly does <fio for want of a better, At the risk of Stepping in where the angels of science .•fear to tread, or, at any rate, tread gingerly, 1 should like a word her?. By what .right do we restrict insects to our own five souses, and csncially to the obviously limited range in which these act? Five is an arbitrary number; in other realms of nature there may be fifty or fifty thousand.

Recently I received from, an officer serving .on the South American const Hie following letter:—

"One bright, clear diiy last 'week (March of this year) we verc lying closu inshort and sending out., intermittently 'on the low-power wireless when the air seemed jo become full of butterflies and other' winged insects. The majority of the butterflies vrern white with blackspots or tortoise-shell. When the wireless stonned they all dispersed. AVns- this sudden attraction to the ship <Ine to the. wireless? There was uo wind at the time and the season now corresponds to early autumn at home.', .

It would appear from Hi is that some insects, at any rate, including certain butterflies, possess organs capable of response to tlie vibrations of the wireless, vibrations to which our own coarser organisations arc altogether insensible, and % parity of reasoning it is fair to infer that the male Oak Eggnt' mav own a receiver by which it actually takes in the love message disnatched by the. imprisoned '.naiden in this chin box miles away.