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I have carefully measured the proboscis of a specimen of cluentius from South America in the collection of the British Museum, and find it to be nine inches and a quarter long! One from tropical Africa is seven inches and a half. A species having a proboscis two or three inches longer could reach the nectar in the largest flowers of Angræcum sesquipedale, whose nectaries vary in length from ten to fourteen inches. That such a moth exists in Madagascar may be safely predicted; and naturalists who visit that island should search for it with as much confidence as astronomers searched for the planet Neptune - and they will be equally successful! (en) |
