To [Gardeners’ Chronicle] [after 27 August 1863]1
Peaches perforated & sucked by moths.2— Have any of your readers seen moths or butterflies sucking peaches, plums or other fruit, of which the skin was not broken?
A well-known entomologist, Mr Roland Trimen, writes to me from the Cape of Good Hope, that a moth, the [Achaea chamaeleon], has lately swarmed in the province of Natal;3 & after advancing some indirect evidence that moths are capable of perforating with their delicate proboses the skin of the peach, he sends me the following extract, together with a sketch of a perforated peach, from a letter written to him by an accomplished lady & botanist.4
Footnotes
Summary
[Roland] Trimen of the Cape of Good Hope sends evidence that a moth [Achaea chamaeleon] is capable of perforating the skin of a peach with its delicate proboscis. Have any readers observed moths or butterflies sucking any fruit of which the skin was not previously broken?
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-4279F
- From
- Charles Robert Darwin
- To
- Gardeners’ Chronicle
- Sent from
- unstated
- Source of text
- DAR 70: 172
- Physical description
- ADraft 1p
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 4279F,” accessed on 19 April 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-4279F.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 11