HAWK-MOTH AND MEADOW-PIPIT 127 



man, to look on it so and then at its portrait for artists 

 and illustrators have been trying to do it these hundred 

 years is almost enough to make one hate their art. 



My ambition has been to find this moth free, in order 

 to discover, if possible, whether or no it ever makes its 

 mysterious squeaking sound when at liberty. But I 

 have not yet found it, and Lepidopterists I have talked 

 to on this subject, some who have spent their lives in 

 districts where the insect is not uncommon, have 

 assured me that they have never seen, and never expect 

 to see, a death's-head which has not been artificially 

 reared. Yet moths there must be, else there would be 

 no caterpillars and no chrysalis. 



One evening, in a potato patch, I witnessed a large 

 hawk-moth meet his end in a way that greatly surprised 

 me. I was watching and listening to the shrilling of a 

 great green grasshopper, or leaf cricket, that delightful 

 insect about which I shall have to write at some length 

 in another chapter, when the big moth suddenly 

 appeared at a distance of a dozen yards from where I 

 stood. It was about the size of a privet-moth, and had 

 not been many moments suspended before a spray of 

 flowers, when a meadow-pipit, which had come there 

 probably to roost, dashed at and struck it down, and 

 then on the ground began a curious struggle. The 

 great moth, looking more than half as big as the 

 aggressor, beat the pipit with his strong wings in his 

 efforts to free himself ; but the other had clutched the 

 soft, stout body in its claws, and standing over it with 



