14 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



THE VOCAL AND INSTEUMENTAL MUSIC OF 



INSECTS. 



By a. H. Swinton. 



(Continued from vol. xiv. p. 432.) 



I HAVE a pamphlet, written in German, that explains that 

 numbers of moths and butterflies having striations on the 

 proboscis or palpi can play the trombone when occasion 

 serves, but this instrumentation I have not chanced to hear ; 

 those with short tongues would be the most adapted to perform. 

 Acherontia atropos is met with in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the 

 islands of Mauritius and Bourbon, into which gardens in the sea 

 it probably has been introduced by human agency. It was 

 already in the Mauritius when the author of ' Paul and Virginia ' 

 visited it, for he tells us the inhabitants believed it cast dust 

 when flying through an apartment that caused blindness. Simi- 

 larly, the inhabitants of Sikkim are said to have a horror of a 

 moth found near the Snowy Mountains. It is said of the 

 other " death's-heads " found in Asia, that Acherontia lachesis 

 squeaks like a mouse, and the smaller styx, the commoner 

 species or local variety, found in Bengal, when vexed, emits yet 

 shriller sounds. Mr. W. C. Gott says, in the * Entomologist,' 

 that the caterpillars oiLangia zenzeroides, that feed on the apricots 

 at Simla, are given to hiss, but that the moth when it emerges 

 only faintly squeaks. Dr. George Gibb tells us, in the ' Canadian 

 Naturalist,' that the Hemaris thysbe, which is accounted rare, 

 squeaked loudly when captured, and continued to squeak in 

 captivity. 



Owing to their large composite eyes butterflies see all around 

 them, and although the sense of hearing is not correspondingly 

 developed, a perception of freedom seems to prompt those that 

 are strong on the wing to click with exultation as they sail with 

 proud dominion through the azure deep of air, and they, as 

 would appear, produce this running music by jolting an inflated 



