MANDUCA ATROPOS. 447 



3. He ran a pin into the head and underneath the tongue of another 

 specimen, when the cry ceased suddenly. 



4. After having removed the sinciput oi another living specimen, he saw 

 the play of the muscles which rose and fell at each cry. He paralysed 

 these with a sharp instrument ; the cry ceased immediately. The interior of 

 the head presents, he says, on each side, two small corneous bodies, transparent, 

 elongated in form, having at the middle of their length a strong ridge on the 

 convex part. 



5. A pupa of M. atropos, which he took from the earth some moments 

 before the emergence of the imago, having uttered a rather faint little cry 

 when he pressed it between his fingers, he considered that this cry could 

 neither be produced by the friction of the tongue against the palpi (on account of 

 their position in the pupa) nor by the escape of air through the tracheae, nor in 

 the way suggested by Passerini, but by the action of the muscles on these 

 two corneous bodies of which he has spoken. 



The cry, he says, does not appear to him to be produced by air 

 driven from the interior of the head, because the tongue, rolled up 

 against it, leaves, in this position, very little or no passage for the 

 air. He suggests that the corneous bodies, which are found in 

 the interior and at the two sides of the head of this species, 

 may be a character of the male, like the stridulating organs in 

 the males of orthoptera, and proposes to investigate this point further. 

 [He adds that the larva of M. atropos, when irritated, utters a slight 

 cry which he thinks comes from the head and not from the friction 

 of the mandibles one against the other, as might have been thought, 

 for the cry did not cease when he had removed the mandibles.] 

 Aigner-Abafi asserts that Goeze observed that there must be an 

 internal vocal organ, a view w r hich, half-a-century later, Passerini 

 (already referred to sup?-a) supported (Ann. Set. Nat., 1828, p. 332), 

 asserting that there is a hollow in the head connected with the false 

 canal of the palpi, whilst a long and excellent note (based on personal 

 experiments) by Ghiliani (Bull. Soc. Ent. Er., 1844, pp. lxxii-lxxiv) 

 seems completely to support Passerini. Reference should also be 

 made to the details given by Goureau (Ann. Soc. Ent. Er., 1883, 

 pp. 401, et seq.), and Duponchel (op. ci't., 1839, pp. 59-65), 

 some of whose earlier views ran in this direction. Rossi, 

 too, who at first adopted Reaumur's explanation, later came 

 (Opusc. Scelli, v., p. 173) to the conclusion that the sound was 

 produced by air being forced through the trunk. Nordmann (Bull. 

 Acad. Imp. Set. St. Petersb., iii., pp. 164-168), as the result of 

 his own investigation of the anatomy of M. atropos, says that 

 he entirely failed to find the cavity connected with the tongue 

 which Passerini mentioned. The true cavity of the tongue, he 

 says, leads into the oesophagus and then into the venter. He 

 contends that if Passerini's observation had any foundation, then 

 the respiratory organs in this moth must be double. His own 

 view is that " the organ, by the aid of which the death's-head 

 moth produces its oft-mentioned loud piping sound, has its 

 seat, neither in the head nor in the tongue, but on the underneath 

 part of the abdomen." He says that "on the first abdominal seg- 

 ment, below the first spiracle, lies a fold, perhaps 4 lines in length, 

 broader above, gradually narrowing below, which is formed from 

 the less projecting margin of the first segment and the more pro- 

 jecting of the second ; this cleft or recess, when artificially extended, 

 measures, at its greatest width, nearly half a line, and is covered 

 by a long, narrow, oval, white membrane, a tympanum, which 



