12 OCTOBER 1934, Page 15

The Moth's Choice Here is a coincidence that may be

worth the attention of both gardeners and students of insects. In a Hertfordshire garden I found that strange and not very common migrant insect, the humming-bird hawk moth very busy with the blue flowers of a plumbago, that to my mind is the very best • of all rough border plants in autumn. A week later the head gardener of a great show garden in Carnarvonshire asked me what the curious creature was that had swarmed in the previous week about his plumbagos. He had counted sOme seventeen over one pluntbago bush. The insect was the humming-bird hawk moth. It had appeared simul- taneously in connexion with the same garden plant in counties as far removed from one another as Hertford and Carnarvon.