finding of the female. For
instance, the day before the cage was installed in a certain room. The
males visited the room and fluttered about the cage for a couple of
hours, and some even passed the night there. On the following day, at
sunset, when I moved the cage, all were out of doors. Although their
lives are so ephemeral, the youngest were ready to resume their
nocturnal expeditions a second and even a third time. Where did they
first go, these veterans of a day?

They knew precisely where the cage had been the night before. One would
have expected them to return to it, guided by memory; and that not
finding it they would go out to continue their search elsewhere. No;
contrary to my expectation, nothing of the kind appeared. None came to
the spot which had been so crowded the night before; none paid even a
passing visit. The room was recognised as an empty room, with no
previous examination, such as would apparently be necessary to
contradict the memory of the place. A more positive guide than memory
called them elsewhere.

Hitherto the female was always visible, behind the meshes of the
wire-gauze cover. The visitors, seeing plainly in the dark night, must
have been able to see her by the vague luminosity of what for us is the
dark. What would happen if I imprisoned her in an opaque receptacle?
Would not such a receptacle arrest or set free the informing effluvia
according to its nature?

Practical physics has given us wireless telegraphy by means of the
Hertzian vibrations of the ether. Had the Great Peacock butterfly
outstripped and anticipated mankind in this direction? In order to
disturb the whole surrounding neighbourhood, to warn pretenders at a
distance of a mile or more, does the newly emerged female make use of
electric or magnetic waves, known or unknown, that a screen of one
material would arrest while another would allow them to pass? In a word,
does she, after her fashion, employ a system of wireless telegraphy? I
see nothing impossible in this; insects are responsible for many
inventions equally marvellous.

Accordingly I lodged the female in boxes of various materials; boxes of
tin-plate, wood, and cardboard. All were hermetically closed, even
sealed with a greasy paste. I also used a glass bell resting upon a
base-plate of glass.

Under these conditions not a male arrived; not one, though the warmth
and quiet of the evening were propitious. Whatever its nature, whether
of glass, metal, card