INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 131 



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 takes possession of a hive, having either 

 destroyed or driven away its inhabitants, and consumes all 

 the honey it contains. 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 apivorus, 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 oif to feed its young. ^ 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 (^Achey^ontia atropos), already celebrated as the 

 innocent cause of alarm ; and he remembers that several, 

 some years before, had been found dead in the bee-houses.^ 

 M. Huber, also, in 1804, discovered that it had made its way 

 into his hives and those of his vicinity, and had robbed them 

 of their honey. In Africa, we are told, it has the same pro- 

 pensity ; which the Hottentots observing, in order to mono- 

 polise the honey of the wild bees, have persuaded the colonists 

 that it inflicts a mortal wound. ^ This moth has the faculty 

 of emitting a remarkable sound, which he supposes may pro- 

 duce an effect upon the bees of a hive somewhat similar to 

 that caused by the voice of their queen, which as soon as 

 uttered strikes them motionless, and thus it may be enabled 

 to commit with impunity such devastation in the midst of 

 myriads of armed bands.^ The larvas of two species of moth 

 (^Galleria cereana, and Mellonella) exhibit equal hardihood 

 with equal impunity. They, indeed, pass the whole of their 

 initiatory state in the midst of the combs. Yet in spite of 

 the stings of the bees of a whole republic, they continue their 



1 Latreille, Hist, des Fourmis, 307 — 320. 



2 Naturforscher, Stk. xvi. 74. 



3 Quoted from Campbell's Travels in South Africa, in the Quarterly Review 

 for July, 1815, 315. 4 Ruber, Pref, xi— xiii. 



K 2 



