326 THE DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH. 



that we possessed ; while others, again, have been 

 lost to us moderns. Some probably might be in- 

 troduced with the numerous exotic plants recently 

 imported, or this particular food may have tended 

 to favour the increase of rarely existing natives; 

 but how such a creature as this could have been 

 brought with any plant is quite beyond compre- 

 hension. We may import continental varieties of 

 potatoes, but the death's-head moth we have never 

 observed to have any connexion with the tuber 

 itself, or inclination for it. As certain soils will 

 produce plants by exposure to the sun's rays, or by 

 aid of peculiar manures, when no pre-existent root 

 or germ could rationally be supposed to exist, so 

 will peculiar and long-intervening seasons give birth 

 to insects from causes not to be divined. We may, 

 perhaps, conclude, that some concurrence produced 

 this sphinx, and then its favourite food, the po- 

 tato plant, nourished it, to the augmentation of its 

 species. 



Superstition has been particularly active in sug- 

 gesting causes of alarm from the insect world ; and 

 where man should have seen only beauty and wis- 

 dom, he has often found terror and dismay. The 

 yellow and brown-tailed moths, the deathwatch, 

 our snails (as mentioned in p. 34$) , and many others, 

 have all been the subjects of his fears ; but the 

 dread excited in England by the appearance, noises, 

 or increase of insects, are petty apprehensions, 

 when compared with the horror that the presence 

 of this acherontia occasions to some of the more 



