Vitality of ike Sphinx Moth. 21 



coming up from the south-eastward. Conspicuous among them 

 by their great numbers as well as by their formidable appear- 

 ance, were the Sphinx moths. These large insects seemed gifted 

 with marvellous powers of flight; for although the wind amounte 1 

 to a fresh breeze, I noticed that they were not only able to hold 

 their own, but even to make headway against it. We concluded, 

 however, that nearer in shore the wind was much stronger, perhaps 

 reaching us so as an upper current, and that it had consequently 

 blown them off the land. Later in the day the Lepidoptera 

 were represented in still greater variety, so that altogether the 

 ship exhibited an unusually sportive appearance; men and officers 

 alike striking out with their caps here and there, as they pursued 

 the objects of their fancy. In the course of the day I collected 

 no less than seventeen species, of which fourteen were moths, and 

 the remainder butterflies. As illustrating the great tenacity of 

 life of the Sphinx moths, I may mention that, in the case of one 

 refractory individual, it was only after employing all the deadly 

 resources at the time at my command, viz., prussic acid, ammonia, 

 oxalic acid, chloroform, crushing the thorax, etc., that I could 

 succeed in removing all the ordinary manifestations of life. 

 However, as, after long incarceration in a bottle filled with the 

 fumes of chloroform, he at length appeared to have succumbed, I 

 proceeded to remove the contents of his large fleshy body. This 

 done, I filled in the body with cotton wadding, and placing the 

 specimen on one side, proceeded to operate on another. But no 

 sooner had I put down the specimen thus prepared, than it pro- 

 ceeded to kick about in a most vigorous way, and otherwise gave 

 unmistakable signs of vitality. On turning it on its legs, it 

 crawled about, clung to my finger, and seemed to imply that 

 it could get on just as well with a cotton interior as with the 

 whole complicated apparatus of intestine and so forth, which it 

 had given me so much trouble to remove. 



It was a strange coincidence, that among the contents of the 

 tow-net on this occasion was a large black Chrysalis. It also 



