Our extensive cultivation of the potato furnishes us annually with several specimens of that fine animal the death’s-head moth[64] (acherontia atropos), and in some years I have had as many as eight brought me in the larva or chrysalis state. Their changes are very uncertain. I have had the larva change to a chrysalis in July, and produce the moth in October; but generally the aurelia remains unchanged till the ensuing summer. The larvæ or caterpillars, “strange ungainly beasts,” as some of our peasantry call them, excite constant attention when seen, by their extraordinary size and uncommon mien, with horns and tail, being not unusually five inches in length, and as thick as a finger. This creature was formerly considered as one of our rarest insects, and doubtful if truly indigenous; but for the last twenty years, from the profuse cultivation of the potato, is become not very uncommon in divers places. Many insects are now certainly found in England, which former collectors, indefatigable as they were, did not know that we possessed; while others again have been lost to us moderns. Some probably might be introduced with the numerous exotic plants recently imported, or this particular food may have tended to favor the increase of rarely existent natives; but how such a creature as this could have been brought with any plant is quite beyond comprehension. We may import continental varieties of potatoes, but the death’s-head moth we have never observed to have any connexion with the tuber itself, or inclination for it. As certain soils will produce plants by exposure to the sun’s rays, or by aid of peculiar manures, when no pre-existent root or germ could rationally be supposed to exist; so will peculiar and long intervening seasons give birth to insects from causes not to be divined. We may perhaps conclude, that some concurrence produced this sphinx, and then its favorite food, the potato plant, nourished it, to the augmentation of its species.