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INSECTS. 
The larvae are smooth, generally with a horn on the last segment of the abdomen. 
They make no cocoon, but the pupa lies in the earth, into which the larva burrows 
before the transformation takes place. As is the case with almost all, they are 
protected by their colouring, which assimilates to that of the food-plant. These 
fine insects are divided into several subfamilies and many genera. 
As the type of the subfamily Acherontinai, may be taken the well-known 
death’s-head moth (Acherontia atropos), which is by far the largest of British 
moths. It is a very stout, bulky insect, with strong, broad wings; its thorax having 
on the upper side a pale mark, which bears some small resemblance to a human 
skull, whence it derives its scientific and trivial names. The fore-wings are dark 
plum-colour, lined and spotted with the yellow; the hind-wings yellow, with two 
sinuous transverse bars of black; and the body dark plum-colour, with black trans¬ 
verse lines, and a yellow patch at the side of each segment. The most remarkable fact 
about the moth is that it is capable of producing an audible squeak. Whether this is 
ADULT AND CATERPILLAR OP SPURGE HAWK-MOTH, WITH ICHNEUMON-FLY. 
produced, as was formerly supposed, by the friction of the palpi against the 
coiled proboscis, or by the sudden passage of air—previously drawn into a cavity 
in the stomach—through the oesophageal orifice and the proboscis, acting upon a 
cleft at the extremity of the latter, is not certain. If, as has been asserted, the 
squeak does not abate even on the decapitation of the moth, the air-passage theory 
suffers a shock, and evidently does not entirely account for the noise. The 
cleft at the end of the proboscis would perform a somewhat similar function to 
that of the tongue in a penny trumpet, the reed in certain wind instruments, or 
the orifice in a whistle-pipe. The handsome larva (green, with large, pale yellow, 
swollen anterior segments, and yellow, black-speckled oblique stripes across the 
sides), with its spinous tail, may be sometimes discovered on the jasmine and in 
potato-fields. Not unfrequently, the large pupa tumbles from its friable earthen 
case, when the potato crop is dug. The moth flies strongly at night, feasting 
usually upon the sap oozing from the trees. It does not, however, hesitate to rob 
the hive of the honey-bee, and apparently without molestation. 
