Among all the anecdotes given, perhaps the best instance in relation to the intelligence of the bee is that narrative of its stratagems in warfare with the famous Death's-Head Moth. Mr. Huish, to be sure, leaning upon Buffon, laughs at it, believes it on a par with Jack's Beanstalk, and is grimly satisfied that no bees ever erected fortifications of any kind other than as against the effluvium of murdered mouse or snail when they wall up its source in a tomb of wax; but it is impossible to look at the benevolent, bland face in any picture of Huber, with its sweetness of expression, and its innocent, wide, wandering eyes, and not wish to believe every word he says. M. Michelet tells the story so pleasantly that it would be difficult to quote it, especially as it is well to be credulous in good company. "About the time of the American Revolution, a little before that of the French, there appeared and multiplied a thing unknown to our Europe, a being of frightful shape, a large and powerful moth, marked plainly enough in yellowish gray, with an ugly death's head. This sinister creature, that had never before been seen, alarmed the rural regions, and appeared to be an augury of the greatest misfortunes. In reality, those who were terrified by it had brought it upon themselves. It had entered the country as a caterpillar upon its natal plant, the American potato, the fashionable vegetable of the time, extolled by Parmentier, protected by Louis XVI., and spreading everywhere. The _savans_ christened this stranger by a name not too reassuring,--the Sphinx Atropos. "This animal was terrible indeed,--but only to honey. Of that it was gluttonous, and capable of everything in order to obtain it. A hive of thirty thousand bees did not appall it. In the depth of midnight, the voracious monster, profiting by that hour when the outskirts of the city are weakly guarded, with a little dull lugubrious noise, muffled as if by the smooth down which covered him, invaded the hive, sought the combs, gorged himself, pillaged, spoiled, overthrew the stores and the brood. In vain might the attacked party awaken, assemble, and riot; stings could not pierce the covering,--the species of soft, elastic mattress with which he was everywhere garnished, like the Mexicans of the time of Cortés in their cotton armor that no Spanish weapon could penetrate. "Huber took counsel with himself for some means of protecting his bees from this daring robber. Should he make gratings? should he make doors? and how? That was his doubt. The best imagined closure possible had the inconvenience of hindering the great movement of exit and entrance always going on at the sill of the hive. Their impatience rendered these barriers, in which they would entangle themselves and break their wings, intolerable to the bees.