In mid-winter, says Huber again, in their season of inertia, an over-heavy slab of wax fell away, but was checked _en route_ by the cakes beneath. An avalanche seemed imminent! But the bees invented buttresses and barriers in strong mastic, which, supporting the fallen cake and propping up the sides of the hive, prevented the dangerous ruin from dragging down the inner edifice. Then, to prevent the occurrence of similar misfortunes, they created some novel architectural works in the shape of flying buttresses, bulwarks, pillars, cross-beams, and the like. _Novel!_ Ay, this is a sufficient refutation of Buffon's theory. That machines or automata could invent, is a thing not easily explicable. Yet the sovereign authority of this great dictator of natural history would have prevailed, perhaps, over facts and over observation, if, towards the close of the last century, the bees themselves, by an unforeseen stroke, had not definitively cut the Gordian knot. It was about the epoch of the American, and shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution. An unknown creature then made its appearance over all Europe,--of a frightful figure,--a great strong nocturnal butterfly, marked very plainly in tawny-gray, with a hideous death's head. This sinister being, which none had seen before, alarmed every countryside, and seemed an omen of the most terrible misfortunes. Yet, in truth, those who were terrified by it had brought it into Europe. It had come in the grub condition with its natal plant, the American potato,--the fashionable vegetable which Parmentier extolled, Louis XVI. protected, and which spread in all directions. The savants baptized the insect with a somewhat horrifying name--the _Sphinx Atropos_. And terrible indeed _was_ this new creature, but only for the honey. Of this it was remorselessly greedy, and to attain it was capable of everything. A hive of thirty thousand bees could not daunt it. In the depths of night, the rapacious monster, profiting by the hour when the approaches to the city are less carefully guarded, with a gloomy but subdued sound, as if stifled by the soft down which covers it (and all other nocturnal insects), invaded the hive, swooped down on the combs, devoured and plundered, gutted and destroyed the magazines, and slew the infant bees. In vain they awoke, and flew to arms; their sting could not penetrate through the soft elastic padding which clothed the sphinx,--like the cotton armour worn by the Mexicans in the days of Cortez, and impenetrable by Spanish weapons.