115 



the year , Thomas MouiFct informs us that the 

 Deatli's Head l\I<>th flies with a great noise and 

 unable to see well in the night whatever glistering 

 tbere be of rotten wood , scales of fish , and the 

 like, it greedily follows ; there is a popular tale 

 of its entering liee hives and terrifying tiic bees 

 with its clatter in order to steal their honey; 

 certainly- all the Death's Heads, Aclieroutia 

 Alropos, Sa(aiuis and Lethe, found in Europe or 

 Asia , s(|neak like a mouse when seized as does 

 the smaller Styx the commonest species in Bengal 

 which emits a shriller sound , and many sug- 

 gestions have been made as to how their cry is 

 made. The common opinion however is that it is 

 produced liy the tongue which is shorter than usual 

 in a Sphinx ]\Ioth ; Mr. Joseph Anderson says in 

 the Entomologist, 'Press the tongue and the noise 

 ceases'; Mr. W. ,1. Pearce has remarked that on 

 the seventheenth of December 1885 having heard 

 a belated chrysalis of our Death's Head utter a 

 squeak he unsealed the covering of its eyes when 

 he saw the extended tubes of the tongue de- 

 pressed and pressed together each time the sound 

 was repeated ; Dr. H. Landois in his pamphlet 

 „Die Ton- und Stimmapparate der Insekten" 

 affords a conclusive i-eason that the cry is pro- 

 duced by the file that will be found at the base 

 of the palpi over which the tongue rubs, for he 

 discovered when the palpi were removed the moth 

 could squeak no longer. This escaped the notice 

 of Mr. Moseley who in the volume of Nature for 

 1872 presented the bibliography on the subject 

 to the reader's notice. Previously when in London 

 in October 1871 I procured a male of the Death's 

 Head which 1 kept for some time in a cage 

 feeding it on sugar and water that it sucked in 

 with a sidelong mow of the upper side of its 

 proboscis, as it did so it vibrated its wings that 

 resounded through the room like a top running 

 down or the whirr of a fly wheel : if its antennae 

 became clogged it duteously cleaned them with 

 the nail on the tibia of its fore feet , and if its 

 feather scales stuck together it shuffled about 

 until it got rid of them, so that soon it began 

 to look very bad and unsuitable for a cabinet 

 specimen. When allowed to walk it expressed 

 decided satisfaction by stretching out its antennae, 

 and then if touched it squeaked ; if held in the 

 hand it squeaked louder and puffed out the first 

 segments of its abdomen which disclosed on either 

 side a whirling, orange coloured , hair fan from 

 a pocket ; that spread out like two stars and 

 gyrating as a trundling mop scattered around 

 a scent of jessamine that soon became aluminious 

 and disagreeable. Hence probably arose the fable 

 told by St. Pierre that the inhabitants of the 

 Isle of France , where it seems to be found as 

 well as in Brittany . believed the dust that it 

 cast when flying through an apartment caused 

 blindness : mine had not that power , like all 



moths when it took into its head to fly around 

 the room it first pumped air into its spiracles 

 by winnowing with its wings , and then trans- 

 formed into a balloon its flight was owl like and 

 heavy. "When the air became light before rain 

 and the footfalls in the street sounded louder, 

 its squeaking l)ecame violent and imiiulsive; at 

 such a time the tick-tick ! of the Death Watch 

 Beetle resounds, the nightly hoot and shrieks of 

 the Tawny Owl cause a shiver, and white sea- 

 gulls a family incubus in Devonsliirc fly inland; 

 all of which weather prognostics have been ac- 

 counted death omens for then the patient who 

 feels the change often succumbs, and hence there 

 is reason for the dread depicted in the scull and 

 cross bones on the creatures thorax. After the 

 Death's Head had squeaked like a corncrake or 

 an angry queen bee arousing the hive to swarm, 

 its fans could be seen expanded in the morning 

 twilight: of these scent fans that ai-e sessile on 

 the body a minute anatomical description has 

 been given by Professor Nordman of St. Peters- 

 burg , and similar fans it is said constitute the 

 charm exerted over the more indolent sex by the 

 males of the Privet and Convolvulus Hawks, 

 which according to Professor Targioni and others 

 have fans of yellow hair on the two sides of the 

 first abdominal ring which when expanded yield 

 a glandular small of musk , and by that of the 

 olive coloured Zonilia Morpheus common in India, 

 Fritz Müller likewise informs us that when the 

 Brasilian Sphinx, Macrosilia antaens, flutters in 

 the hand ; two similar pencils of pale hairs that 

 diffuse a musky smell are wont to expand from 

 their grooves beneath the abdomen. 



But if choice perfumes express the delight of 

 the male Sphinx when alive the female lies em- 

 balmed in death , for Mr. E. K. Robinson has 

 told a strange story concerning the gathering of 

 the keen scented males of the long-tongued Con- 

 volvulus Hawk at the commencement of June 

 1877 in a room forty feet from the ground around 

 the body of a dead female when daylight was 

 about to break in at three in the morning. Nor 

 is it alone the perfect insects that are noisy for 

 the muscular caterpillars of the Sphinx moths 

 make a snap when they wriggle which no doubt 

 they have discovered is useful as a protection in 

 case of assault: Mr. W. C. Gott says in the 

 Entomologist that those of Langia zeuzeroides 

 that feed on the apricots at Simla in India utter 

 a hiss whereas the moth when it emerges only 

 faintly squeaks ; in Canada when you shake 

 the hickory trees on which the caterpillars of 

 SmerinthiiH juglaudis are feeding cries of tcep- 

 tcep! it is said, resound, and those of Siiierinthus 

 excaeeatus that there pasture on the beech have 

 been accused of sinsina:. 



2. Scent fans are the perquisite of the males 

 of many of the Noctuina whoso eyes shine at 



