(_Continued from page 180_.)
The following curious notice of the _Acherontia Atropos_, or Death's-head
Moth, we extract from "The Journal of a Naturalist:"--"The yellow and
brown-tailed moths," he observes, "the death-watch, our snails, and many
other insects, have all been the subjects of man's fears, but the dread
excited in England by the appearance, noises, or increase of insects, are
petty apprehensions compared with the horror that the presence of this
Acherontia occasions to some of the more fanciful and superstitious
natives of northern Europe, maintainers of the wildest conceptions. A
letter is now before me from a correspondent in German Poland, where this
insect is a common creature, and so abounded in 1824 that my informant
collected fifty of them in a potato field of his village, where they call
them the 'death's-head phantom,' the 'wandering death-bird,' &c. The
markings on the back represent to their fertile imaginations the head of a
perfect skeleton, with the limb bones crossed beneath; its cry becomes the
voice of anguish, the moaning of a child, the signal of grief; it is
regarded, not as the creation of a benevolent being, but as the device of
evil spirits--spirits, enemies to man, conceived and fabricated in the
dark; and the very shining of its eyes is supposed to represent the fiery
element whence it is thought to have proceeded. Flying into their
apartments in an evening, it at times extinguishes the light, foretelling
war, pestilence, famine, and death to man and beast. * * * This insect
has been thought to be peculiarly gifted in having a voice and
squeaking like a mouse when handled or disturbed; but, in truth, no insect
that we know of has the requisite organs to produce a genuine voice; they
emit sounds by other means, probably all external."
The Icelanders believe _Seals_ to be the offspring of Pharaoh and his host;
who, they assert, were changed into these animals when overwhelmed in the
Red Sea. The _Grampus_, _Porpoise_, and _Dolphin_, have each from the
earliest ages been the subject of numerous superstitions and fables,
particularly the latter, which was believed to have a great attachment to
the human race, and to succour them in accidents by sea; it is a perfectly
straight fish, yet even painters have promulgated a falsity respecting it,
by representing it from the curved form in which it appears above water,
bent like the letter S reversed. "The inhabitants of Pesquare," says Dr.
Belon, "and of the borders of Lake Gourd are firmly persuaded that the
_Carp_ of those lakes are nourished with pure gold; and a great portion of
the people in the Lyonnois are fully satisfied that the fish called
_humble_ and _ernblons_ eat no other food than gold. There is not a
peasant in the environs of the Lake of Bourgil who will not maintain that
the _Laurets_, a fish sold daily in Lyons, feed on pure gold alone. The
same is the belief of the people of the Lake Paladron in Savoy, and of
those near Lodi. But," adds the Doctor, "having carefully examined the
stomachs of these several fishes, I have found that they lived on other
substances, and that from the anatomy of the stomach it is impossible that
they should be able to digest gold." This fable, therefore, with that of
the _Chameleon_ living on air only, and some others which we shall have
occasion to mention, may be regarded amongst those exploded by science.
The fable of the _Kraken_ has been referred to imperfect and exaggerated
accounts of monstrous _Polypi_ infesting the northern seas; how far may
not the _Cuttle-fish_ have given rise to this fiction? In hot countries
(our readers will remember that in a late paper, _Mirror_, vol. xvii. pp.
282-299, we directed their attention to the similarity of superstitions in
every country of the world, hence infering a common, and most probably
oriental origin for all)--in hot countries cuttle-fish are found of
gigantic dimensions; the Indians affirm that some have been seen two
fathoms broad over their centre; and each arm (for this kind is the
eight-armed cuttle-fish) nine fathoms long!!! Lest these animals should
fling their arms over the Indians' light canoes, and draw them and their
owners into the sea, they fail not to be provided with an axe to chop them
off.
The ancients believed that the oil of the _Grayling_ obliterated freckles
and small-pox marks. The adhesive qualities of the _Remora_, or
_Sucking-fish_, and its habit of darting against and fixing itself to the
side of a vessel, caused the ancients to believe that the possessors of it
had the power of arresting the progress of a ship in full sail.
Some Catholics, in consequence of the _John Doree_ having a dark spot,
like a finger-mark, on each side of the head, believe this to have been
the fish, and not the _Haddock_, from which the Apostle Peter took the
tribute-money, by order of our Saviour. The modern Greeks denominate it
"the fish of St. Christopher," from a legend which relates that it was
trodden on by that saint, when he bore his divine burden across an arm of
the sea. Some species of _Echini_, fossilized, and seen frequently in
Norfolk, are termed by the ignorant peasantry, and considered, _Fairy
Loaves_, to take which, when found, is highly unlucky.
The _Amphisbaena_, from its faculty of moving backwards or forwards at
pleasure, has been thought to have a head at either extremity of its
reptile body, but close inspection proves this opinion false. The
fascinating power of the _Rattlesnake_, of which so many stories have in
times past been related, and which was asserted to exist in its glittering
eyes, has been of late years resolved into that extreme nervous terror of
its victim (at sight of so certain a foe) which deprives it of the power
of motion, and causes it to fall, an unresisting prey, into the reptile's
jaws. We may here pause to observe, _en passant_, that the antipathy which
people of all ages and nations have felt against every reptile of the
serpent tribe, from the harmless worm to the hosts of deadly "dragons"
which infest the torrid zone, and the popular opinion that all are
venomous, often in spite of experience, seems to be not so much
superstition, as a terror of the species, implanted, since the fall, in
our bosoms, by the same Divine Being who at that period pronounced the
serpent to be the most accursed beast of the field.
(_To be continued_.)
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