16i INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



quently injurious to them. That universal plunderer 

 the wasp, and his formidable congener the hornet, often 

 seize and devour them, sometimes ripping open their body 

 to come at the honey, and at others carrying off that 

 part in which it is situated. The former frequently takes 

 possession of a hive, having either destroyed or driven 

 away its inhabitants, and consumes all the honey it con- 

 tains. Nay there are certain idlers of their own species, 

 called by apiarists corsair-bees, which plunder the hives 

 of the industrious. From the curious account which 

 Latreille has given us of Philanthus apivorus, a wasp-like 

 insect, it appears that great havoc is made by it of the 

 unsuspecting workers, which it seizes while intent upon 

 their daily labours, and carries off to feed its young a . 

 Another insect, which one would not have suspected of 

 marauding propensities, must here be introduced. Kuhn 

 informs us, that long ago (in 1799) some monks who 

 kept bees, observing that they made an unusual noise, 

 lifted up the hive, when an animal flew out, which to 

 their great surprise no doubt, for they at first took it for 

 a bat, proved to be the death's-head hawk-moth (Ache- 

 rontia Atropos), already celebrated as the innocent cause 

 of alarm 5 ; and he remembers that several, some years 

 before, had been found dead in the bee-houses c . M. Hu~ 

 ber, also, in 1804- discovered that it had made its way 



lifting themselves up above them, as if looking for something. One 

 or two of them leaped upon my hand. Near one of these flowers I 

 found a small Andrcna or Halictus, upon which some of these crea- 

 tures were busy sucking the poor animal, so that it seemed unable to 

 fly away. When disclosed from the egg, I imagine they get on the top 

 of these flowers to attach themselves to any oftheAndreniclte that may 

 alight on them, or come sufficiently near for them to leap on it. K. 



a Latreille, Hist, des Fourmis, 307-20. b See above, p. 34. 



Naturforscher Stk. xvi. 74. 



