128 Generation of Sounds by Canadian Insects. 



purpose of the larynx in higher animals, when the insect is mo- 

 tionless. In the cock chafer, which soon makes its presence 

 known in the evening, by the noise it makes in flying about a 

 room, the sounds are likely due to currents of air directed to some 

 of the spiracles which exist at the interspace between every two 

 segments of its body, as in common with the other coleoptera. 



Lest it might be thought that I had overlooked the sound pro- 

 duced by the Anobium, a small beetle that burrows in old timber, 

 I will merely give it the passing notice, that its tick, which has 

 procured for it the name of the death-watch, is totally unconnected 

 with the respiratory system, and is produced by rapping its head 

 against the wood work, and if the signal be answered, it is con- 

 tinually repeated. Its noise resembles a moderate tap with the 

 nail upon the table, and this imitation will be answered by the in- 

 sect, as if the real sound of its own kind. When I first heard the 

 death-watch, 1 was told it was a very bad sign, and that it por- 

 tended the dissolution of some relative ! The superstitious notions 

 which prevail regarding this harmless beetle, are preposterous, but 

 at the same time have done much mischief. The reader (especi- 

 ally the superstitious one) is referred to the description of the 

 death-watch in Maucder's Treasury of Natural History. 



Among the Lepidoptera — the butterflies of which those common 

 to Canada have been so ably illustrated in the pages of this Journal, 

 I have heard a stridulous sound emitted by many species of the 

 sphinx or hawkmoth tribe, captured generally in the evening twi- 

 light. This sound is something like the squeaking of a mouse or 

 a bat, and was strikingly pronounced in a beautiful and rare spe- 

 cimen of humble-bee hawkmoth, the Sesia Pelasgus with reddish 

 brown wings and hyaline disks, taken in the gardens of Mr. James 

 E. Campbell, at the foot of the Current St. Mary, This squeaking 

 noise continued as long as the creature remained alive, and was 

 much louder than in any other of the numerous sphinges it was 

 my good fortune to capture. It is a well-known fact that when 

 the death's head sphinx, Sphinx Atropos* common to England, is 

 in the least irritated or disturbed, it emits a similar sound, and it 

 is related that from this circumstance, together with the presence 

 of a very large patch, exactly resembling the usual figure of a 

 skull or death's head on the top of the thorax, it is held in much 



* A very perfect specimen is in the Museum of the Natural History 

 Society, presented by the writer. 



