134 A COMPANY OF DEATH'S-HEADS. 



once imputed terrors. Only to the people of the hive (as we 

 have elsewhere noticed) have the terrors of the death's-head 

 any real foundation, when, as the " Bee Tiger," he carries 

 dismay into the waxen city, and, under cover of his awe- 

 striking voice, he pillages, with impunity, its honeyed stores. 

 Although, as such felonious act is sufficient to testify, the 

 Acherontia Atropos is a prodigious lover of honey, he is not 

 provided with the long tubular trunk wherewith the true 

 hawk-moths are accustomed to rifle flowers, having in its stead 

 only a thick, stiff, short proboscis ; more convenient, therefore, 

 for insertion into comparatively shallow cells than into deep 

 nectaries. The antennas of the Acherontia are also short, 

 another distinction from the Sphinxes, with which it used to 

 be, but is not at present, classed.* Hidden under some shady 

 covert from " the garish eye of day," the death's-head is ac- 

 customed to take wing in the evening and morning twilight. 

 It is usually a solitary visitant ; but a common attraction has 

 sometimes brought together companies of its kind. So large 

 a number are said, for instance, to have been once drawn to a 

 lantern on board a vessel at anchor on the coast of Devon, 

 that a dozen were hunted down by the sailors. If they had 

 known the character of their game, we doubt if our honest 

 tars (superstitious as they once were, and still, to a degree, 

 remain) would not have cared less to have been boarded by a 

 dozen Frenchmen. Stephens makes mention of four being 



* See Vignette. 



