AUGUST 197 



is not difficult to understand the superstitious dread 

 wherewith it used to be regarded by country people, and 

 despite Board Schools, perhaps still is. It is not every- 

 body, even in these enlightened days, who will care to 

 take in his naked hand a winged creature as big as a 

 small bat (the death's-head sometimes measures six 

 inches from tip to tip of the wings), marked on its back 

 with the accredited emblem of mortality, and wearing a 

 funebral livery of steely black and dusky brown, slashed 

 and barred with flame colour. Moreover, the faculty 

 possessed by this moth of giving audible expression to 

 irritation imparts a shock to untrained nerves, and the 

 captor's instinct is to fling the creature away. 



XXX 



Naturalists are not agreed about the mechanism pro- 

 ducing the sound which the insect is able to .^^ y^j^g 

 utter as a caterpillar and a chrysalis, as well as o^ Atropos 

 a perfect moth. Most of them assign the sound as a 

 function of the blunt proboscis protruding between the 

 two great eyes, which have been calculated to contain 

 upward of 12,000 lenses. But about the object of the 

 sound there is greater diflerence of opinion. Some 

 consider that it serves as a love-call between the sexes ; 

 but then the caterpillars can utter it, albeit their mouths 

 are always full, and a caterpillar that understands his or 

 her business, has no time for ogling or flirting, only for 

 eating. If it is intended for conversation, then one would 

 say that a caterpillar's small talk must be the reverse of 

 entertaining, consisting almost exclusively of remarks 

 upon the quaHty of the potato crop. Besides, these great 



