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§ VIII. Where is the Seat of the Musky Scent in 
Hawk Moths ? 1 
I. Among- the thousands of European collectors of Lepidoptera not one 
appears to have asked this question. And yet with the question the 
answer would have immediately suggested itself ; for in seeking the source 
of a strong smell one has only to follow one’s nose. 
While in Europe the Convolvulus Hawk Moth is not uncommon, and 
the musky scent of the male has long been known, I have to-day 2 for the 
first time taken in this locality a musk-scented male Hawk Moth, of a 
small species, only 40 mm. long, the name of which I do not know. It 
was flying round the many-blossomed, large blue heads of an Agapanthus 
in my garden. 
It was at once evident, on smelling it, that the very powerful scent 
came from the ventral side of the abdomen. As I held the moth upside 
down between my thumb and forefinger, I noticed, that, when it fluttered 
its wings, a pale brush of musk-scented hairs was spread out on each side 
of the base of the abdomen. When the creature became quiet, the tuft 
was again withdrawn into an elongate groove, extending on each side 
over nearly the whole length of the first two segments, and disappeared, 
in consequence of the scales bounding the groove closing over it. In 
repose there was nothing to be seen of the tuft, and but little of the 
groove. The latter can be made visible in the dead insect by pressing the 
abdomen from behind forwards; and the groove is then seen between 
the separated scales as a narrow, bare longitudinal streak. 
Again, therefore—but in a new place—we meet with the same efficient 
form of scent apparatus as is found, bearing perceptible odours, on the 
wings and at the apex of the abdomen in various males of diurnal 
Lepidoptera. I can scarcely doubt that the “tibial tufts” (Herrich- 
Schaeffer) which are found in Hesperidae and Heterocera serve to diffuse 
a scent attractive to the females, although I have not been able to per¬ 
ceive it,—for instance, in the males of Pcmtherodes pardelaria , a species 
1 Kosmos , III. (1878), pp. 84-85. 
2 Nov. 26,1877. Fritz Muller gave a brief account of this observation in a letter, 
written Nov. 27, to Charles Darwin. Extracts from this letter were read by Meldola 
to the Entomological Society, and are published, together with a reproduction of 
F. Muller’s diagrammatic drawing of the ventral aspect of the moth with the scent- 
tufts extended, in Proc. Ent. Soc ,, 1878, pp. ii., iii.—E.B.P. 
