INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 163 



quently injurious to them. That universal plunderer 

 the wasp, and his formidable congener the hornet, often 

 seize and devour them, sometimes ripping open their body 

 to come at the honey, and at others carrying off that 

 part in which it is situated. The former frequently take 

 possession of a hive, having either destroyed or driven 

 away its inhabitants, and consume all the honey it con- 

 tains. Nay there are certain idlers of their own species, 

 called by apiarists corsair-bees, which plunder the hives 

 of the industrious. — From the curious account which 

 Latreille has given us of Philanthus ajnvorus, a wasp-like 

 insect, it appears that great havoc is made by it of the 

 unsuspecting workers, which it seizes while intent _upon 

 their daily labours, and carries off to feed its young a . 

 Another insect, which one would not have suspected of 

 marauding propensities, must here be introduced. Kuhn 

 informs us, that long ago (in 1799) some monks who 

 kept bees, observing that they made an unusual noise, 

 lifted up the hive, when an animal flew out, which to 

 their great surprise no doubt, for they at first took it for 

 a bat, proved to be the death's-head hawk-moth (Sphinx 

 AfrOjpos, L.), already celebrated as the innocent cause 

 of alarm b ; and he remembers that several, some years 

 before, had been found dead in the bee-houses c . M. Hu- 

 ber, also, in 1804? discovered that it had made its way 

 into his hives and those of his vicinity, and had rob- 

 bed them of their honey. In Africa we are told it has 

 the same propensity ; which the Hottentots observing, 



disclosed from the egg, I imagine they get on the top of these flowers 

 to attach themselves to any Melitta that may alight on them, or 

 come sufficiently near for them to leap on it. K. 



a Latreille, Bist. des Fourmis, 307-20. b See above, p. 34. 



c Naturforscher Stk. xvi. 74. 



M 2 



