12 NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF DUBLIN. 



indeed, a pin requires to be pushed with force before it enters its body 

 — while others think that it is by the sounds it makes that it overawes 

 the bees. In the last number of the " Zoologist" (Nov. 1 869), there is an 

 interesting account by an experienced beemaster, the Bev. Charles 

 Bury, M. A., of a raid made by this insect on one of his hives. On the 

 15th June he was " raising" one of his hives in the evening twilight, 

 and while watching the movements of the bees, who were considerably 

 excited by the disturbance, something so like a bat flitted round that it 

 did not attract his particular notice; but shortly afterwards he saw 

 what he could not fail to recognise as a death's head moth flit back- 

 wards and forwards once or twice before the hive, dash at the entrance, 

 penetrate the cluster of bees, and disappear within ; he had only a small 

 landing net at hand, and with this he waited anxiously close outside 

 the hive, to intercept the intruder on its exit. In about five minutes 

 out she came (for it proved to be a female), in no small bustle. 

 He thought he could distinguish — for it was almost dark — five 

 or six bees attached to her legs. Instead of taking wing, the 

 moth scrambled fast enough over the cluster of bees about the 

 door to the top of the hive, he put the net on her; but, as hundreds of 

 bees were entangled in and about the meshes of the net, he could not 

 seize the moth, which, after running round and round with marvellous 

 celerity, escaped, and was off like a shot. Next evening he kept 

 watch for her. ; she appeared, dashed against his study window, which 

 was immediately over the hive, and he lost sight of her. On the 2nd 

 October he found between the folds of a piece of carpeting which had 

 been over the same hive all the summer to protect it from rain, a 

 death's head, the finest British specimen he had ever seen ; ' and, as he 

 had not seen one since June 16th, he suspected it was the same, that 

 it descended every evening to feast in the hive, and then returned to 

 its place of retreat within the folds of carpet. This moth, while in 

 captivity, on being touched emitted sounds which could be distin- 

 guished by sharp ears. He had observed that while the moth was in 

 the hive, sounds, best described as a rather musical squeak, appeared 

 to come from the hive. Those given out by the moth while in capti- 

 vity corresponded to these. This moth, although very seldom observed 

 on the wing, may, in the proper season, be found in most unexpected 

 places — for instance, on the arrival of the mail train at Dumfries sta- 

 tion, on the evening of 27th September, 1868, one of the servants about 

 the station noticed a large insect at rest on one of the carriages; it turned 

 out to be a very fine specimen of Acherontia atropos, measuring over five 

 inches across the wings— ("Ent. Monthly Magazine," vol. v., p. 171). 

 Mr. Andrews not along ago exhibited to this Society a specimen taken 

 in an office in this city ; and the insect has been found alive in the 

 British Museum. A medical man has given me in writing his recol- 

 lections of a strange adventure with a death's head moth in an 

 ominous situation, at the bedside of a patient. He was attending a 

 lady in James's street, in this city, one afternoon in autumn, more than 



