day of Februarie (1575), being the feast of Saint Matthie, on which dai
the faire was kept at Tewkesburie, a strange thing happened there. For
after a floud which was not great, but such as therby the medows neere
adioning were covered with water, and in the after noone there came
downe the river of Seuerne great numbers of flies and beetles
(_Melolontha vulgaris_?), such as in summer evenings use to strike men
in the face, in great heapes, a foot thicke above the water, so that to
credible mens judgement there were seene within a paire of buts length
of those flies above a hundred quarters. The mils there abouts were
dammed up with them for the space of foure daies after, and then were
clensed by digging them out with shovels: from whence they came is yet
unknowne but the daie was cold and a hard frost.”[140]
Such another remarkable phenomenon is recorded to have occurred in
Ireland, in the summer of 1688. The Cock-chafers, in this instance, were
in such immense numbers, “that when,” as the chronicler, Dr. Molyneux,
relates, “towards evening or sunset, they would arise, disperse, and fly
about, with a strange humming noise, much like the beating of drums at
some distance; and in such vast incredible numbers, that they darkened
the air for the space of two or three miles square. The grinding of
leaves,” he continues, “in the mouths of this vast multitude altogether,
made a sound very much resembling the sawing of timber.”[141]
In a short time after the appearance of these beetles in these immense
numbers, they had so entirely eaten up and destroyed the leaves of the
trees, that the whole country, for miles around, though in the middle of
summer, was left as bare as in the depth of winter.
During the unfavorable seasons of the weather, which followed this
plague, the swine and poultry would watch under the trees for the
falling of the beetles, and feed and fatten upon them; and even the
poorer sort of the country people, the country then laboring under a
scarcity of provision, had a way of dressing them, and _lived upon them
as food_. In 1695, Ireland was again visited with a plague of this same
kind.[142]
In Normandy, according to Mouffet, the Cock-chafers make their
appearance every third year.[143] In 1785, many provinces of France were
so ravaged by them, that a premium was offered by the government for the
best mode of destroying them.[144] During this year, a farmer, near
Blois, employed a number of children and the poorer people to destroy
the Cock-chafers at the rate of two liards a hundred, and in a few days
they collected fourteen thousand.[145]
The county of Norfolk in England seems occasionally to have suffered
much from the ravages of these insects; and Bingley tells us that “about
sixty years ago, a farm near Norwich was so infested with them, that the
farmer and his servants affirmed they had gathered eighty bushels of
them; and the grubs had done so much injury, that the court of the city,
in compassion to the poor fellow’s misfortune, allowed him twenty-five
pounds.”[146]
The seeming blunders and stupidity of these insects have long been
proverbial, as in the expressions, “blind as a beetle,” and
“beetle-headed.”
Cetoniidæ--Rose-chafers.
A very pretty species of the _Cetoniidæ_, the _Agestrata luconica_, is
of a fine brilliant metallic green, and found in the Philippine
Islands. These the ladies of Manilla keep as pets in small bamboo cages,
and carry them about with them wheresoever they may go.[147]
Buprestidæ--Burn-cows.
Many species of the _Buprestidæ_ are decorated with highly brilliant
metallic tints, like polished gold upon an emerald ground, or azure upon
a ground of gold; and their elytra, or wing-coverings, are employed by
the ladies of China, and also of England, for the purpose of
embroidering their dresses.[148] The Chinese have also attempted
imitations of these insects in bronze, in which they succeed so well
that the copy may be sometimes mistaken for the reality.[149] In
Ceylon[150] and throughout India,[151] the golden wing-cases of two of
this tribe, the _Sternocera chrysis_ and _S. sternicornis_, are used to
enrich the embroidery of the Indian zenana, while the lustrous joints of
the legs are strung on silken threads, and form necklaces and bracelets
of singular brilliancy. The _Buprestis attenuata_, _ocellata_ and
_vittata_ are also wrought into various devices and trinkets by the
Indians. The _B. vittata_ is much admired among them. This insect is
found in great abundance in China, and thence exported into India, where
it is distributed at a low price.[152]
Mr. Osbeck saw in China a _Buprestis maxima_, which had been dried, and
to which were fastened leaden wings so painted as to make them look like
the wings of butterflies. This artificial monster, he adds, was to be
sold in the vaults among other trifles.[153] The _B. maxima_ is set up
along with Butterflies in small boxes, and vended in the streets of
Chinese cities.[154]
So many species of the _Buprestidæ_ are clothed with such brilliant
colors, that Geoffroy has thought proper to designate them all under
the generic appellation of _Richard_. The origin of this name is as
singular as its application is fantastical. It was originally given to
the Jay, in consequence of the facility with which that bird was taught
to pronounce the word.[155]
Modern writers have been much divided in their opinion as to what genus
the celebrated _Buprestis_ of the ancients belongs. All indeed have
regarded it as of the order Coleoptera, but here their agreement ceases.
Linnæus seems to have looked upon it as a species of the genus to which
he has given its name. Geoffroy thinks it to be a _Carabus_ or
_Cicindela_; M. Latrielle, to the genus _Melöe_; and Kirby and Spence to
_Mylabris_.[156]
Of this Buprestis, Pliny says: “Incorporat with goat sewer, it taketh
away the tettars called lichenes that be in the face.”[157] And Dr.
James says that insects of this family “are all in common, inseptic,
exulcerating, and (possess) a heating quality; for which reason, they
are mixed up with medicines adapted to the cure of a Carcinoma, Lepra,
and the malignant Lichen. Mixed in emollient pessaries, they provoke the
Catamenial discharges.”[158]
The Greeks, it is said, commended the Buprestis in food.[159]
Elateridæ--Fire-flies, Spring-beetles, etc.
In an historical sense, the most interesting species of the family
_Elateridæ_ is the _Elater noctilucus_, a native of the West Indies, and
called by the inhabitants, _Cucujus_. From an ancient translation of
Peter Martyr’s History of the West Indies, we make the following
quotation, which contains many curious facts relative to this insect:
“Whoso wanteth _Cucuji_, goeth out of the house in the first twilight of
the night, carrying a burning fier-brande in his hande, and ascendeth
the next hillocke, that the _Cucuji_ may see it, and swingeth the
fier-brande about calling _Cucuji_ aloud, and beating the ayre with
often calling and crying out _Cucuji, Cucuji_.... Beholde the desired
number of _Cucuji_, at what time, the hunter casteth the fier-brande out
of his hande. Some _Cucuji_ sometimes followeth the fier-brande, and
lighteth on the grounde, then is he easily taken.... The hunter havinge
the hunting _Cucuius_, returneth home, and shutting the doore of the
house, letteth the praye goe. The _Cucuius_ loosed, swiftly flyeth about
the whole house seeking gnatts, under their hanging bedds, and about the
faces of them that sleepe, whiche the gnattes used to assayle, they seem
to execute the office of watchmen, that such as are shut in, may quietly
rest. Another pleasant and profitable commodity proceedeth from the
_Cucuji_. As many eyes as every _Cucuius_ openeth, the host enjoyeth the
light of so many candles: so that the Inhabitants spinne, sewe, weave,
and daunce by the light of the flying _Cucuji_. The Inhabitants think
that the _Cucuius_ is delighted with the harmony and melodie of their
singing, and that he also exerciseth his motion in the ayre according to
the action of their dancing.... Our men also read and write by that
light, which always continueth untill hee have gotten enough gnatts
whereby he may be well fedd.... There is also another wonderfull
commodity proceeding from the _Cucuius_: the Islanders, appoynted by our
menn, goe with their good will by night with 2 _Cucuji_ tyed to the
great tooes of their feete: (for the travailer[160] goeth better by
direction of the lights of the _Cucuji_, then if hee brought so many
candels with him, as the _Cucuji_ open eyes) he also carryeth another
_Cucuius_ in his hande to seeke the Utiae by night (Utiae are a certayne
kind of Cony, a little exceeding a mouse in bignesse.)... They also go a
fishing by the lights of the _Cucuji_.... In sport, and merriment, or to
the intent to terrifie such as are affrayed of every shaddow, they say
that many wanton wild fellowes sometimes rubbed their faces by night
with the fleshe of a _Cucuius_ being killed, with purpose to meete their
neighbors with a flaming countenance ... for the face being annointed
with the lumpe or fleshy parte of the _Cucuius_, shineth like a flame of
fire.”[161]
At Cumana, the use of the Cucujus is forbidden, as the young Spanish
ladies used to carry on a correspondence at night with their lovers by
means of the light derived from them.[162]
Captain Stedman tells us, that one of his sentinels, one night, called
out that he saw a negro, with a lighted tobacco-pipe, cross a creek near
by in a canoe. At which alarm they lost no time in leaping out of their
hammocks, and were not a little mortified when they found the pipe was
nothing more than a Fire-fly on the wing.[163]
An individual of this species, brought to Paris in some wood, in the
larva or nymph state, there underwent its metamorphosis, and by the
light which it emitted, excited the greatest surprise among many of the
inhabitants of the Faubourg St. Antoine, to whom such a phenomenon had
hitherto been unknown.[164]
When Cortes and Narvaez were at war with one another in Mexico, Bernal
Diaz relates “that one night in the midst of darkness numbers of shining
Beetles (_Elater noctilucus_) kept continually flying about, which
Narvaez’s men mistook for the lighted matches of our fire-arms, and this
gave them a vast idea of the number of our matchlocks.”[165] Thomas
Campanius tells us that one night the Cucuji frightened all the soldiers
at Fort Christina, in New Sweden (Pennsylvania?): they thought they were
enemies advancing toward them with lighted torches.[166] Another such
like story, which is not incredible by any means, is told us by Mouffet.
He says that when Sir Thomas Cavendish and Sir Robert Dudley first
landed in the West Indies, and saw an infinite number of moving lights
in the woods, which were merely these Elaters, they supposed that the
Spaniards were advancing upon them with lighted matches, and immediately
betook themselves to their ships.[167]
The Indians of the Carribbee Islands, Ogleby remarks, “anoint their
bodies all over (at certain solemnities wherein candles are forbidden)
with the juice squeezed out of them (Cucuji), which causes them to
shine like a flame of fire.”[168] And in the Spanish Colonies, on
certain festival days in the month of June, these insects are collected
in great numbers, and tied as decorations all over the garments of the
young people, who gallop through the streets on horses similarly
ornamented, producing on a dark evening the effect of a large moving
body of light. On such occasions the lover displays his gallantry by
decking his mistress with these living gems.[169]
At the present day, the poorer classes of Cuba and the other West India
Islands, make use of these luminous insects for lights in their houses.
Twenty or thirty of them put into a small wicker-work cage, and dampened
a little with water, will produce quite a brilliant light. Throughout
these islands, the Cucujus is worn by the ladies as a most fashionable
ornament. As many as fifty or a hundred are sometimes worn on a single
ball-room dress. Capt. Stuart tells me he once saw one of these insects
upon a lady’s white collar, which at a little distance rivaled the
Kohinoor in splendor and beauty. The insect is fastened to the dress by
a pin through its body, and only worn so long as it lives, for it loses
its light when dead.
The statement of Humboldt is, that at the present day in the habitations
of the poorer classes of Cuba, a dozen of Cucuji placed in a perforated
gourd suffice for a light during the night. By shaking the gourd
quickly, the insect is roused, and lights up its luminous disks. The
inhabitants employ a truthful and simple expression, in saying that a
gourd filled with Cucuji is an ever-lighted torch; and in fact it is
only extinguished by the death of the insects, which are easily kept
alive with a little sugar cane. A lady in Trinidad told this great
traveler, that during a long and painful passage from Costa Firme, she
had availed herself of these phosphorescent insects whenever she wished
to give the breast to her child at night. The captain of the ship would
not permit any other light on board at night, for fear of the
privateers.[170]
Southy has happily introduced the Cucujus in his “Madoc” as furnishing
the lamp by which Coatel rescued the British hero from the hands of the
Mexican priests:
She beckon’d and descended, and drew out
From underneath her vest a cage, or net
It rather might be called, so fine the twigs
Which knit it, where, confined, two fire-flies gave
Their lustre. By that light did Madoc first
Behold the features of his lovely guide.
Darwin says: “In Jamaica, at some seasons of the year, the Fire-flies
are seen in the evening in great abundance. When they settle on the
ground, the bull-frog greedily devours them, which seems to have given
origin to a curious, though very cruel, method of destroying these
animals: if red-hot pieces of charcoal be thrown toward them in the dusk
of the evening, they leap at them, and hastily swallow them, mistaking
them for Fire-flies, and are burnt to death.”(!)[171]
Beetles belonging to the family _Elateridæ_ have been so called from a
peculiar power they have of leaping up like a tumbler when placed on
their backs, and for this reason they have received the English
appellations of _Spring-beetles_ and _Skip-jacks_, and from the noise
which the operation makes when they leap, they are also called _Snap_,
_Watch_, or _Click-beetle_, and likewise _Blacksmiths_.
If a Blacksmith beetle enters your house, a quarrel will ensue which may
end in blows.
This superstition obtains in Maryland.
Lampyridæ.--Glow-worms.
Antonius Thylesius Bonsentinus, following his elegant description of the
Glow-worm, gives a pretty fable of its origin. As translated in Moufet’s
Theater of Insects, his words are these:
This little fly shines in the air alone,
Like sparks of fire, which when it was unknown
To me a boy, I stood then in great fear,
Durst not attempt to touch it, or come near.
May be this worm from shining in the night,
Borrow’d its name, shining like candle bright.
The cause is one, but divers are the names,
It shines or not, according as she frames
Herself to fly or stand; when she doth fly,
You would believe ’twere sparkles in the skie,
At a great distance you shall ever finde
Prepar’d with light and lanthorn all this kinde.
Darkness cannot conceal her, round about
Her candle shines, no winds can blow it out.
Sometimes she flies as though she did desire
Those that pass by to observe her fire;
Which being nearer, seem to be as great,
As sparks that fly when smiths hot iron beat.
When Pluto ravish’d Proserpine, that rape,
For she was waiting on her, chang’d her shape,
And since that time, she flyeth in the night
Seeking her out with torch and candle light.[172]
The following anecdote is related by Sir J. E. Smith, of the effect of
the first sight of the Italian Glow-worms upon some Moorish ladies
ignorant of such appearances. These females had been taken prisoners at
sea, and, until they could be ransomed, lived in a house in the
outskirts of Genoa, where they were frequently visited by the
respectable inhabitants of the city; a party of whom, on going one
evening, were surprised to find the house closely shut up, and their
Moorish friends in the greatest consternation. On inquiring into the
cause, they found that some Glow-worms--_Pygolampis Italica_--had found
their way into the building, and that the ladies within had taken it
into their heads that these brilliant guests were no other than the
troubled spirits of their relations; of which curious idea it was some
time before they could be divested.--The common people of Italy have a
superstition respecting these insects somewhat similar, believing that
they are of a spiritual nature, and proceed out of the graves, and hence
carefully avoid them.[173]
Cardan, Albertus, Gaudentinus, Mizalduo, and many others have asserted
that perpetual lights can be produced from the Glow-worm; and that
waters distilled from this insect afford a lustre in the night. It is
needless to say these assertions are without foundation.[174]
In India, the ladies have recourse to Fire-flies for ornaments for
their hair, when they take their evening walks. They inclose them in
nets of gauze.[175] And the beaux of Italy, Sir J. E. Smith tells us,
are accustomed in the summer evenings to adorn the heads of the ladies
with Glow-worms, by sticking them also in their hair.[176]
Never kill a Glow-worm, if you do, the country people say, you will put
“the light out of your house,”--_i.e._ happiness, prosperity, or
whatever blessing you may be enjoying.
A Glow-worm, in your path, denotes brilliant success in all your
undertakings. If one enters a house, one of the heads of the family will
shortly die. These superstitions obtain in Maryland.
Of the Glow-worm--_Noctiluca terrestris_, Col. Ecphr., i. 38--Dr. James
says: “The whole insect is used in medicine, and recommended by some
against the Stone. Cardan ascribes an anodyne virtue to it.”[177]
Mr. Ray, in his travels through the State of Venice, says: “A discovery
made by a certain gentleman, and communicated to me by Francis Jessop,
Esq., is, that those reputed meteors, called in Latin _Ignis fatui_, and
known in England by the conceited names of _Jack with a Lanthorn_, and
_Will with a Wisp_, are nothing else but swarms of these flying
Glow-worms. Which, if true, we may give an easy account of those
phenomena of these supposed fires, _viz._, their sudden motion from
place to place, and leading travelers that follow them into bogs and
precipices.”[178] It has been suggested[179] also that the mole-cricket,
_Gryllotalpa vulgaris_,[180] which in its nocturnal peregrinations was
supposed to be luminous, is this notorious “Will-o’-the-wisp.”
Pliny says: “When Glow-worms appear, it is a common sign of the
ripenesse of barley, and of sowing millet and pannick.... And Mantuan
sang to the same tune:
Then is the time your barley for to mow,
When Glow-worms with bright wings themselves do show.”[181]
Ptinidæ--Death-watch, etc.
The common name of _Death-watch_, given to the _Anobium tesselatum_,
sufficiently announces the popular prejudice against this insect; and so
great is this prejudice, that, as says an editor of Cuvier’s works, the
fate of many a nervous and superstitious patient has been accelerated by
listening, in the silence and solitude of night, to this imagined knell
of his approaching dissolution.[182] The learned Sir Thomas Browne
considered the superstition connected with the Death-watch of great
importance, and remarks that “the man who could eradicate this error
from the minds of the people would save from many a cold sweat the
meticulous heads of nurses and grandmothers,”[183] for such persons are
firm in the belief, that
The solemn Death-watch clicks the hour of death.
The witty Dean of St. Patrick endeavored to perform this useful task by
means of ridicule. And his description, suggested, it would appear, by
the old song of “A cobbler there was, and he lived in a stall,” runs
thus:
----A wood worm
That lies in old wood, like a hare in her form,
With teeth or with claws, it will bite, it will scratch;
And chambermaids christen this worm a Death-watch;
Because, like a watch, it always cries click.
Then woe be to those in the house that are sick!
For, sure as a gun, they will give up the ghost,
If the maggot cries click when it scratches the post.
But a kettle of scalding hot water injected,
Infallibly cures the timber affected:
The omen is broken, the danger is over,
The maggot will die, and the sick will recover.
Grose, in his Antiquities, thus expresses this superstition: “The
clicking of a Death-watch is an omen of the death of some one in the
house wherein it is heard.” Watts says: “We learn to presage approaching
death in a family by ravens and little worms, which we therefore call a
Death-watch.”[184] Gay, in one of his Pastorals, thus alludes to it:
When Blonzelind expired,....
The solemn Death-watch click’d the hour she died.[185]
And Train,--
An’ when she heard the Dead-watch tick,
She raving wild did say,
“I am thy murderer, my child;
I see thee, come away.”
And Pope,--
Misers are muck-worms, silkworms beaux,
And Death watches physicians.[186]
“It will take,” says Mrs. Taylor, a writer in Harper’s New Monthly
Magazine, “a force unknown at the present time to physiological science
to eradicate the feeling of terror and apprehension felt by almost every
one on hearing this small insect.” She herself, an entomologist,
confesses to have been very much annoyed at times by coming in contact
with this “strange nuisance;” but she was cured by an overapplication.
“I went to pay a visit,” says she, “to a friend in the country. The
first night I fancied I should have gone mad before morning. The walls
of the bed-room were papered, and from them beat, as it were, a thousand
watches--tick, tick, tick! Turn which way I would, cover my head under
the bedclothes to suffocation, every pulse in my body had an answering
tick, tick, tick! But at last the welcome morning dawned, and early I
was down in the library; even here every book, on shelf above shelf, was
riotous with tick, tick, tick! At the breakfast table, beneath the
plates, cups, and dishes, beat the hateful sound. In the parlor, the
withdrawing-room, the kitchen, nothing but tick, tick! The house was a
huge clock, with thousands of pendulums ticking from morning till night.
I was careful not to allow my great discomfort to annoy others. I argued
what they could tolerate, surely I could; and in a few days habit had
rendered the fearful, dreaded ticking a positive necessity.”[187]
The Death-watch commences its clicking, which is nothing more than the
call or signal by which the male and female are led to each other,
chiefly when spring is far advanced. The sound is thus produced: Raising
itself upon its hind legs, with the body somewhat inclined, it beats its
head with great force and agility upon the plane of position. The
prevailing number of distinct strokes which it beats in succession is
from seven to nine or eleven; which circumstance, thinks Mr. Shaw, may
perhaps still add, in some degree, to the ominous character which it
bears. These strokes follow each other quickly, and are repeated at
uncertain intervals. In old houses, where these insects abound, they may
be heard in warm weather during the whole day.[188]
Baxter, in his World of Spirits, p. 203, most sensibly observes, that
“there are many things that ignorance causeth multitudes to take for
prodigies. I have had many discreet friends that have been affrighted
with the noise called a Death-watch, whereas I have since, near three
years ago, oft found by trial that it is a noise made upon paper by a
little, nimble, running worm, just like a louse, but whiter and quicker;
and it is most usually behind a paper pasted to a wall, especially to
wainscot; and it is rarely, if ever, heard but in the heat of summer.”
Our author, however, relapses immediately into his honest credulity,
adding: “But he who can deny it to be a prodigy, which is recorded by
Melchior Adamus, of a great and good man, who had a clock-watch that had
layen in a chest many years unused; and when he lay dying, at eleven
o’clock, of itself, in that chest, it struck eleven in the hearing of
many.”
In the British Apollo, 1710, ii. No. 86, is the following query: “Why
Death-watches, crickets, and weasels do come more common against death
than at any other time? _A._ We look upon all such things as idle
superstitions, for were any thing in them, bakers, brewers, inhabitants
of old houses, &c., were in a melancholy condition.”
To an inquiry, ibid. vol. ii. No. 70, concerning a Death-watch, whether
you suppose it to be _a living creature_, answer is given: “It is
nothing but a little worm in the wood.”