512 MR. A. G. BUTLER ON THE SPHINGIDA. 
the power of emitting sounds much resembling the creaking of a boot. The manner in 
which these sounds are produced has been the subject of discussion amongst naturalists 
since the year 1742; this point, however, has been satisfactorily settled by Mr. Moseley 
(‘ Nature,’ vol. vi. pp. 151-153), who has demonstrated the existence of a cavity in the 
head, which by the alternate action of elevating and depressing muscles is caused to 
serve as a pair of bellows, by means of which air is forced through the exceedingly short 
proboscis; this organ is thus converted into a small trumpet. The Sphingine are re- 
markable for the length of their proboscides, in which respect they offer a striking contrast 
to the preceding subfamily. Amphonyx cluentius, as mentioned by Mr. A. R. Wallace 
in the ‘ Quarterly Journal of Science’ for 1867 (p. 477), has this organ developed to the 
extraordinary length of 94 inches; and Mr.Wallace confidently looks forward to the dis- 
covery of a Sphine in Madagascar with a proboscis 11 to 12 inches in length ; his antici- 
pation is based upon the fact that the nectaries of Angrwcum sesquipedale vary in length 
from 10 to 14 inches, and must therefore in all probability be fertilized by some such 
hitherto undiscovered agent. 
The first attempt at any thing like a comprehensive paper on the Sphingide was 
published in 1855 by Burmeister in the ‘ Abhandlungen der naturforschenden Gesell- 
schaft zu Halle, and was entitled “ Systematische Uebersicht der Sphingiden Brasiliens ; ” 
it contained descriptions of new genera and species, and gave a list of the then known 
Sphingide of South America. This paper was followed in the succeeding year by the 
seventh volume of Mr. Walker’s ‘ Lepidoptera Heterocera,’ in which an endeayour was 
made to bring together the recorded species from all parts of the world; and, consider- 
ing how little was then known respecting the family, there can be no doubt that this 
catalogue was the best that Mr. Walker ever produced, No attempt was made at classi- 
fication; therefore it is not surprising that nearly allied species appeared in widely 
sundered genera. Still the omissions are not many, and, but for that indefatigable Lepi- 
dopterist Mr. W. F. Kirby, would probably, with a few exceptions, have still remained 
undiscovered. The next list of species appeared in 1857, in Horsfield and Moore’s 
Catalogue of the Lepidoptera in the Museum of the East-India Company,’ and added a 
few descriptions ; it was followed two years later by a very careful paper by Dr. Clemens 
in the ‘Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia’ (2nd ser. vol. iv.), 
entitled ‘Synopsis of North-American Sphingide.” This communication was full of 
valuable information ; and for the first time an effort was made to classify the genera and 
species; it was superseded, however, a few years afterwards by “A Synonymical Cata- 
logue of North-American Sphingide, with Notes and Descriptions,” in the fifth volume 
of the ‘ Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Philadelphia,’ from the pens of 
those well-known and able Lepidopterists Messrs. Grote and Robinson, ‘This was a most 
important paper, Inasmuch as it revised most of the New-World genera, throwing them 
into natural subfamilies. In the same volume of the ‘ Proceedings’ appeared several of 
Mr. Grote’s papers on the Sphingide of Cuba, abounding with critical and interesting 
