ORDER IV. MOTHS AND BUTTERFLIES. 181 



Truly a worm may teach us many things ! 'Tis a little 

 index, but, like the needle to the pole, it points to the hand 

 Divine ! 



The Bee-moth (Galleria cereana). 



The Bee-moth is another wonderful little insect, capable 

 of doing much injury, and possessing curious developments 

 of instinct. It seems scarcely possible that a large army of 

 bees, defended by deadly stings such as they possess, should 

 allow a few small soft-bodied and unarmed caterpillars to 

 enter and destroy their fortified castles. Yet this is the case. 

 Notwithstanding their weakness, and entire lack of means 

 to defend themselves, the larvae of the bee-moth will enter 

 and so corrode the honey-combs as to force the bees to aban- 

 don their hive. 



More than two thousand years ago these moths wero 

 mentioned by Aristotle, who says of them : They fly in the 

 night toward a light, and are very fond of eating beeswax, 

 for which purpose they go to the bee-hives and there de- 

 posit their excrements, out of which proceed little worms. 

 Colomela also declares them to be the most terrible ene- 

 mies to bees. 



The caterpillar of the bee-moth has sixteen feet. Its 

 body is yellowish-white, its head brown, and its length, 

 when fully grown, a little more than an inch. It feeds 

 upon the beeswax, and their tiny insect stomachs will di- 

 gest what a learned chemist could not analyze. Their life 

 is one of continual exposure to the greatest danger, for woe 

 to the individual that is caught by a bee. They seem to 

 know, however, that they subsist at the expense of a power- 

 ful and warlike population who admit no strangers within 

 their republican domain; and as their tender, unprotected 

 skins would be constantly exposed to the fatally- venomous 

 stings of the enraged bees, Nature has taught them to dig a 

 mine in the wax, and thus supply themselves with both 



