288 INSECTA. 



the rapid escape of air from two particular cavities of the venter), 

 have frequently produced considerable alarm among the people 

 in certain years when it Avas unsually abundant *. 



The caterpillar is yellow, with blue stripes on the side, and 

 the tail recurved and zig-zag. Jt feeds on the Potato-vine, 

 Jasmin, &c., and becomes a chrysalis near the end of August. 

 The perfect Insect appears in September. 



Tlie caterpillars of certain species, all remarkable for their 



beautiful colours — the celerio, lierii, Elpenor, porcellus — have 



the anterior extremity of the body strongly attenuated in the 



manner of a Hog's snout, Avhence their French name of Co- 



chonnes, and susceptible of being retracted within the third 



ring. The sides are marked with some ocellated spots. These 



species, in this respect, form a very natural division. 



In others, as in the Sesiae, the abdomen is terminated by a brush 



of scales. Scopoli formed a separate genus with them, his Macro- 



GLOssuM; and Fabricius at first united them with his Sesise. He 



afterwards— System. Glossat. — separated them, leaving that generic 



appellation to this group, and giving the name of^GERiA to the 



primitive Sesite. But the Lepidoptera he now calls Sesi^e, have 



the essential characters of Sphinx ; such is the steUatarum, L. ; and 



those he calls fuciformis, bombyliformis, &c. The wings of the 



two latter are mostly diaphanous f. 



Smerinthus, Lut., 

 Where the antennae are serrated and there is no distinct tongue. 



The S. tilicB, much more common however on the Elm, the S. 

 demi-paon, S. populi, S. querci, &c., compose this subgenus. They 

 are heavy Insects, and the inferior wings project beyond the superior, 

 as in several of the genus Bombyx :|:. 



Our third division, that of the Sesiades, comprises those in which 

 the antennae are always simple, fusiform, and elongated, and fre- 

 quently terminated, as in the preceding subgenera, by a little bundle 

 of setae or scales; in which the inferior palpi, slender and narrow, 

 have three very distinct joints, the last tapering to a point ; and 

 where the extremity of the posterior tibiae is armed with very stout 

 spines. The abdomen in most of them is terminated by a sort of 

 brush. 



The caterpillars feed on the internal part of the stems or roots of 

 plants, like those of the Hepiali and Cossi, are naked, without a pos- 

 terior horn, and construct their cocoons in these stems with the debris 

 of the substance on which they have fed. 



this character that the Atropos, and another very analogous species from Java, have 

 heen made to form the genus Acherontia. 



* According to M. Passerini — Ann. des Sc. Nat., XIII, 332 — the organ that 

 produces this noise is seated in the head. 



f For the other species, see Fabricius, loc. cit. ; Godart's Hist. Nat. des Limpid, 

 de France ; and a Memoir of Bois-Duval, in the Mem. de la Soc. Lin. de Paris. 

 M. Lef^bure de Cerisy, naval engineer, has prepared a most excellent Monograph 

 of this genus, accompanied with good figures, which circumstances have not yet 

 allowed him to publish. 



X See Encyc. Method., article Smerinthe; and Godart, op. cit. 



