6 
ON SOME INSECT DEFORMITIES. 
men, believing it to be a new and very curious species of Lepidopteron, 
with all the characters of the order, except that the head is exactly that 
of a caterpillar. In the same volume of the Memoires, the editor (Pre- 
face, p. 8) believes it more prudent not to admit Mueller's insect as 
a new species, because a fact contrary to all hitherto known must be 
proved by a great number of observations before it can be adopted by 
the scientific world. Professor Beckmann, the reputed polyhistor from 
Goettingen, in his Physik. Oekon. Bibliothek, Vol. VI, p. 338, be- 
lieves that Mueller's insect is only a deformity. A review of Mueller's 
paper in the Comment. Lipsiens. (Vol. XXI, p. 466) I have not seen. 
The French paper is translated by the Rev. J. A. E. Goeze, in the 
16th part of the Naturforscher (1781), pp. 203 - 212, pi. 1. The plate 
is of course the same as Mueller's plate, but somewhat inferior in exe- 
cution. The translation, in some places at least, does not entirely 
agree with the original, as Goeze introduces some suppositions to ex- 
plain more fully Mueller's words, which are not everywhere free from 
ambiguity. But it is to be remembered that Goeze had spoken of the 
whole with Mueller, at a visit paid to him by the latter in 1776. At 
that time the type was still present in the collection of the author, 
which was afterwards destroyed at the bombardment of Kopenhagen. 
In my Bibliotheca En torn. (Vol. I, p. 556) I stated that the insect was 
Bombyx dispar, which is apparently an error. Westwood (Introd., 
Vol. II, p. 356) calls it one of the Noctuidae; and Lacordaire (Introd., 
Vol. II, p. 442), une Noctuelle. The insect is not mentioned in the 
general works of Borkhausen and Ochsenheimer, but Werneburg (Beitr. 
zur Schmetterl. kunde, Vol. I, p. 376), quotes it as Bombyx monacha, 
and there is no doubt that this determination is a correct one. 
Mueller found the insect alive, quietly sitting on a stem of Epilobium 
montanum, on July 28, 1762, pinned it, and only became aware at 
home of the remarkable fact that the head of the caterpillar was still 
existing on the moth. Both Mueller and Goeze give as the date June 
28, apparently erroneously, as in the paper it is twice stated that the 
insect lived ten days on the pin, until the 6th of August, when it died. 
From June 28 to July 6 there are only nine days. 
The description by Mueller is as follows : 
Nearly the size of Phal. vinula ; upper wings white, with several 
transverse zigzag lines, the border spotted with black; hind-wings 
smaller, grayish, the border with alternate black and white spots ; all 
the wings blackish underneath, the border spotted with black ; abdo- 
men black, somewhat hairy, with five yellow rings, which are broad 
above, narrower beneath, and twice interrupted ; the tip of the abdo- 
men pointed, yellow, with a yellow ovipositor ; the prothorax densely 
covered with white hairs, sprinkled with black ; the thorax with four 
legs, black and gray-colored ; the tibia with two spurs on the inside. 
