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 antennae, as if to remove the obnoxious irritant that had thus intruded on their presence. Similar observations have led many naturalists to suppose that the antennae 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 antennae. But little, I believe, has been definitely proved save that the antennae 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.