shine round the roots of the pines like golden coats of arms. 



This entomological landscape is enlivened by villagers of all 

 ages and sexes, under the command of some government forester, 

 shaking trees, collecting caterpillars by broom and shovel into 

 baskets and throwing them into fires kindled at different spots in 

 the forest. 



Modern forest culture has abandoned this system of warfare. 

 Experience has shown that the Pinastri epidemic does not recur 

 in the same district, even if nothing has been done. Science has 

 demonstrated, that the enormous accumulation of parasitic 

 Hymcnoptera and Diptera would more than decimate the de- 

 structive insect without human aid. Besides this, insects, with 

 enormous power of locomotion like Sph. Pinastri, never be- 

 come endemic pests. 



But the chief cause of a change in the forest tactics was the 

 danger of fire, caused by the burning of the baskets amidst dry 

 leaves, withered branches and dying pine trees. 



Splmix Pinastri is, as far as I know, the only Sphinx that oc- 

 casionally causes serious damages, the harm done by the Macro- 

 silas to cultivated Solanacece being scarcely worth mentioning. 



If the Sphinges have but little power to harm vegetation, they 

 nevertheless play an important part in their economy, for they are 

 he carriers of pollen from flower to flower. Many of those 

 flowers whose narrow tubular corolla contains anthers in a posi- 

 tion that the pollen never could reach their own stigma nor that 

 of a sister flower, are only fertilized by the interference of the 

 Sphinges. The enormous length of the trunk of some of the 

 Macrosilas is quite in proportion to the narrow, deep tube of the 

 Tobacco flower and other Solanacea; and Apocynace(E, families 

 not only patronized by the larvae, but also by the perfect Sphinx. 

 And so it happens, that the precocious autumnal brood, whose 

 imperfect sexual development prevents them from propagating 

 their own species, contribute largely to the propagation of the 

 plant that serves for food to the larvae of their later born breth- 

 ren and sisters. Looking for the nectar at the base of the cup 

 they charge their trunks with the pollen and carrying in this way 

 kisses from flower to flower, they are the means of fecundating 

 theovula, v. hose growth will serve as food for the offspring of their 

 hybernating relatives. 



There is a curious instance to be mentioned in regard to the 

 mutual relation of some Sphinges and an Asclepiadaceons plant, the 

 Physianthus. The pollen of all the AsclepiadacecB being of a 

 waxy, instead of a mealy substance, is not apt to be carried by 

 the wind like the pollen of other plants nor is the position of 

 the poUinea always such, that without interference of a third 

 party, their contents can possibly reach the stigma. Physian- 

 thns, especially, is a genus, whose anthers are constructed on a 

 plan that would impede communication between pollinia and 



