190 INSECTA. 
cies in France. The spot on the thorax resembling a death’s 
head, and the sharp sound it produces (attributed by Reaumur 
to its rubbing the palpi against its proboscis(1), and by M. Lo- 
rey to 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 was unusually abundant(2). 
The caterpillar is yellow, with blue stripes on the side, and 
the tail recurved and zig-zag. It feeds on the Potato-vine, 
Jasmin, &c., and becomes a chrysalis near the end of August. 
The perfect Insect appears in September. 
The caterpillars of certain species, all remarkable for their 
beautiful colours—the celerio, nerii, Elpenor, porcellus—have the 
anterior extremity of the body strongly attenuated in the manner 
of a Hog’s snout, whence their French name of Cochonnes, 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 Sesiz, 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 Sesiz. He 
afterwards—System. Glossat.—separated them, leaving that generic 
appellation to this group, and giving the name of #cerra to the pri- 
mitive Sesiz. But the Lepidoptera, he now calls Srsraz, have the 
essential characters of Sphinx; such is the stellatarum, L.3 and those 
he calls fuciformis, bombyliformis, &c. The wings of the two latter 
are mostly diaphanous(3). 
SMERINTHUS, Lat. 
Where the antennz are serrated and there is no distinct tongue. 
(1) It is proportionally shorter than in the other Sphinges. Itis probably from 
this character that the Atropos and another very analogous species from Java have 
been made to form the genus .dcherontia. 
(2) According to M. Passerini—Ann. des Sc. Nat., XII, 332—the organ that 
produces this noise is seated in the head. 
(3) For the other species, see Fabricius, loc. cit.; Godart’s Hist. Nat. des 
Lépid. de France; and a Memoir of Bois-Duval, in the Mem, de la Soc. Lin. de 
Paris. M. Lefébure 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. [For American species, see the work already 
quoted, on the Lepidoptera of the United States, by Bois-Duval and Le Conte. 
Am. Ed.] 
