Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0507181237540.12313@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: Moth Radio -
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 12:38:03 -0400 (EDT)
Moth Radio - an unpublished letter by Edwin Way Teale found in a copy of Near Horizons, Dodd, Mead, and Company, NY, 1942, bought at Heights Books in Brooklyn, NY, May 2005 - Edwin Way Teale 93 Park Avenue Baldwin, L. I. New York January 10, 19(4/5)3 */typewriter overstrike; the date is unclear/* Mr. Harold Watson, 68 William Street, New York City,N.Y. */sic/* Dear Mr. Watson: So far as I know, the hypothesis that the Cecropia and other moths may employ a kind of radio in attracting their mates, is merely an interesting theory unsupported by concrete evidence. There have been numerous suggestions that the insects have some sixth sense or other mysterious faculty. I don't think that either you or I can say with absolute finality that they do or do not. But I am sure that the burden of proof is on the person who makes such a proposal rather than vice versa. Until more evidence that */sic/* I have seen so far is brought forth, I, personally, will continue to believe that the acts of these amazing little creatures are governed by the senses we know rather than by some vague or mysterious factor whose existence remains to be proved. Unless the scent organs are also the centers of the "moth radios," I don't see how we can get around the experiments which reveal that male moths fly to the scent organs rather than the moth itself--or even to a container in which the female has rested rather than to the female herself when she is enclosed in an airtight container from which no odor can escape. And radio waves can go through glass. It is an interesting subject, but, as I say, the burden of proof is on the proponents of the new and radical theory and researches */sic/* should be made before such a theory is accepted, even tentatively. Most Sincerely Yours, Edwin W. Teale