same time an enormous batch of the perfect insects hatched out 
at Petaling, and for days the whole estate was humming with 
moths whirling and darting among the coffee trees in countless 
thousands, poising themselves over the fragrant blossoms or just 
pausing for an instant over a leaf to curve their bodies down- 
wards and deposit an egg. 
I fed my moths in captivity on plantain juice, which they 
sucked greedily. 
At i p.m. on the 8th of February, I observed a pair of moths, 
four days old in copula; they were still paired at 5 p.m., but 
were separated when I looked at them again at 8 p.m. I isolated 
these two individuals for observation. Two days later, on the 
10th the male died. The female after impregnation became 
very lively, whirling round and round the bottle most of the day. 
On the 13th this moth died, and on opening her I found 88 eggs 
apparently quite read3^ to be deposited. This number was about 
what I found in several gravid females dissected and is, I think, 
about the average usually laid. 
Between the 5th and the 10th of thcmonth a large number of 
the captive caterpillars turned into pupae. These were all very 
noticeably smaller than the wild chrysalides, the difference in 
size being doubtless due to the fact that the caged larvae were fed 
always on plucked and withering coffee leaves instead of growing 
foliage. 
The time taken by moth’s eggs to hatch, and the duration of 
the pupa stage are very variable and dependent on climatic 
conditions (pupae are frequently ‘forced’ by English collectors), 
but as far as my observations go the different periods in the life 
history of the Bee-Hawk moth are approximately as follows : — 
Egg stage : 5 days or a week. 
Larvae stage : 4 to 5 weeks. 
Pupa stage : 10 days or a for + mght. 
Imago stage: doubtless varies greatly. Females are probably 
impregnated within 3 or 4 days of hatching, lay their eggs about 
a week later, and die a tew u^ /s afterwards. Males probably 
only live a few days, dying after fecundating a single female. 
It is quite impossible to put an exact period to the different 
stages of an insect in the wild state, but the above data gathered 
from my specimens in captivity, ar > probably fairly near the 
mark as they come altogether to about two months, the interval 
of time occurred between the big hatches of the moth at 
Petaling. 
The Bee-Hawk Moths seem to have practically no natural ene- 
mies, or rather no natural enemVs sufficiently numerous to afford 
any check to their ravaging millions. Personally I have only 
seen two birds touch them, the Magpie Robin (Copsychus sau- 
karis) and the yellow-vented Bulbul (Pycnonotus analis); both of 
these feed on the small and half-grown caterpillars, but neither 
hre gregarious species, or sufficiently plentiful to make any 
impression on the vast legions in which the caterpillar 
appears. 
