observed in Sweden, Norway, Northern Germany, and even in Greenland,
where it does great mischief to grass-plots and meadows. It is recorded
to have done very great injury in the eastern mountains of Georgenthal,
as well as at Töplitz in Bohemia, where larvæ were in such large numbers
that in four days and a half 200 men found 23 bushels of them, or
4,500,000 in the 60 bushels of mould which they examined. In Germany it
seems to be confined to high and dry districts, and it never appears
there in wet meadows, but its devastations are sometimes most extensive,
as happened in the Hartz territory in 1816 and ’17, when whole hills
that in the evening were clad in the finest green, were brown and bare
the following morning; and such vast numbers of the caterpillars were
there that the ruts of the roads leading to the hills were full of them,
and the roads being covered with them were even rendered slippery and
dirty by their being crushed in some places.[856]
The notorious astrologer, William Lilly, alluding to the comet which
appeared in 1677, says: “All comets signify wars, terrors, and strange
events in the world;” and gives the following curious explanation of the
prophetic nature of these bodies: “The spirits, well knowing what
accidents shall come to pass, do form a star or comet, and give it what
figure or shape they please, and cause its motion through the air, that
people might behold it, and thence draw a signification of its events.”
Further, a comet appearing in the Taurus portends “mortality to the
greater part of cattle, as horses, oxen, cows, etc.,” and also
“prodigious shipwrecks, damage in fisheries, monstrous floods, and
destruction of fruit by caterpillars and other vermin.”[857]
Josselyn, in the account of his voyage to New England, printed in London
in 1674, has the following relation of an insect which is doubtless a
species of _Agrotis_, probably the _Agrotis telifera_: “There is also
(in New England) a dark dunnish Worm or Bug of the bigness of an
Oaten-straw, and an inch long, that in the Spring lye at the Root of
Corn and Garden plants all day, and in the night creep out and devour
them; these in some years destroy abundance of _Indian_ Corn and Garden
plants, and they have but one way to be rid of them, which the _English_
have learned of the Indians; And because it is somewhat strange, I shall
tell you how it is, they go out into a field or garden with a
Birchen-dish, and spudling the earth about the roots, for they lye not
deep, they gather their dish full which may contain a quart or three
pints, then they carrie the dish to the Sea-side when it is ebbing water
and set it a swimming, the water carrieth the dish into the Sea, and
within a day or two you go into your field you may look your eyes out
sooner than find any of them.”[858]
The Army-worm (larva of _Leucania unipunctata_ of Haworth), during this
our great rebellion, is thought, by many persons in Western
Pennsylvania, to prognosticate the success or defeat of our armies by
the direction it travels. If toward the North, the South will be
victorious; and if toward the South, the North will conquer. An old
gentleman, who believes that a frog’s foot drawn in chalk above the door
will keep away witches, tells me this worm invariably travels southward.
This larva was noticed but a few years before the war began, and then
appearing, as it were, in armies, it was called the Army-worm. The
superstitious omen from it has followed not preceded the name.
Lindenbrog, in his Codex Legum Antiquarum, cum Glossario, fol. Francof.
1613, mentions the following superstition: “The peasants, in many places
in Germany, at the feast of St. John, bind a rope around a stake drawn
from a hedge, and drive it hither and thither, till it catches fire.
This they carefully feed with stubble and dry wood heaped together, and
they spread the collected ashes over their potherbs, confiding in vain
superstition, that by this means they can drive away Canker-worms. They
therefore call this Nodfeur, q. _necessary fire_.”
These fires were condemned as sacrilegious, not as if it had been
thought that there was anything unlawful in kindling a fire in this
manner, but because it was kindled with a superstitious design. They
are, however, Du Cange says, still kindled in France, on the eve of St.
John’s day.[859]
Geometridæ--Span-worms.
The Measuring-worm, crawling on your clothes, is thought to foretell a
new suit; on your hands, a pair of gloves, etc.
Tineidæ--Clothes’-moth, Bee-moth, etc.
In Newton’s Journal of the Arts for December, 1827, there is the
following mention of a new kind of cloth fabricated by insects: The
larvæ of the Moth, _Tinea punctata_, or _T. padilla_, have been directed
by M. Habenstreet, of Munich, so as to work on a paper model suspended
from a ceiling of a room. To this model he can give any form and
dimensions, and he has thus been enabled to obtain square shawls, an air
balloon four feet high, and a woman’s complete robe, with the sleeves,
but without seams. One or two larvæ can weave a square inch of cloth. A
great number are, of course, employed, and their motions are interdicted
from the parts of the model not to be covered, by oiling them. The cloth
exceeds in fineness the lightest gauze, and has been worn as a robe
over her court dress by the Queen of Bavaria.[860]
Authors are of opinion that the ancients possessed some secret for
preserving garments from the Moth, _Tinia tapetzella_. We are told the
robes of Servius Tullius were found in perfect preservation at the death
of Sejanus, an interval of more than five hundred years. Pliny gives as
a precaution “to lay garments on a coffin;” others recommend
“cantharides hung up in a house, or wrapping them in a lion’s
skin”--“the poor little insects,” says Reaumur, “being probably placed
in bodily fear of this terrible animal.”[861]
Moufet says: “They that sell woollen clothes use to wrap up the skin of
a bird called the king’s-fisher among them, or else hang one in the
shop, as a thing by a secret antipathy that Moths cannot endure.”[862]
Among the various contrivances resorted to as a safeguard against the
Bee-moth, _Galleria cereana_, Fabricius, perhaps the most ingenious is
that, mentioned by Langstroth, of “governing the entrances of all the
hives by a long lever-like _hen-roost_, so that they may be regularly
closed by the crowing and cackling tribe when they go to bed at night,
and opened again when they fly from their perch to greet the merry
morn.”[863]
An intelligent man informed Langstroth that he paid ten dollars to a
“Bee-quack” professing to have an infallible secret for protecting Bees
against the Moth; and, after the quack had departed with his money,
learned that the secret consisted in “always keeping strong
stocks.”[864]
ORDER VII.
HOMOPTERA.
Cicadidæ--Harvest-flies.
The Cicadas, _C. plebeja_, Linn., called by the ancient Greeks, (by
whom, as well as by the Chinese, they were kept in cages for the sake of
their song,) _Tettix_, seem to have been the favorites of every Grecian
bard, from Homer and Hesiod to Anacreon and Theocritus. Supposed to be
perfectly harmless, and to live only upon dew, they were addressed by
the most endearing epithets, and were regarded as almost divine. Thus
sings the muse of Anacreon:
Happy creature! what below
Can more happy live than thou?
Seated on thy leafy throne,
Summer weaves thy verdant crown.
Sipping o’er the pearly lawn,
The fragrant nectar of the dawn,
Little tales thou lov’st to sing,
Tales of mirth--an insect king.
Thine the treasures of the field,
All thy own the seasons yield;
Nature paints thee for the year,
Songster to the shepherds dear;
Innocent, of placid fame,
What of man can boast the same?
Thine the loudest voice of praise,
Harbinger of fruitful days;
Darling of the tuneful nine,
Phœbus is thy sire divine;
Phœbus to thy note has given
Music from the spheres of heaven;
Happy most as first of earth,
All thy hours are peace and mirth;
Cares nor pains to thee belong,
Thou alone art ever young.
Thine the pure immortal vein,
Blood nor flesh thy life sustain;
Rich in spirits--health thy feast,
Thou art a demi-god at least.
But the old witticism, attributed to the incorrigible Rhodian
sensualist, Xenarchus, gives quite a different reason to account for the
supposed happiness of these insects:
Happy the Cicadas’ lives,
Since they all have voiceless wives![865]
Plutarch, reasoning upon that singular Pythagorean precept which forbid
the wife to admit swallows in the house, remarks: “Consider, and see
whether the swallow be not odious and impious ... because she feedeth
upon flesh, and, besides, killeth and devoureth especially grasshoppers
(Cicadas), which are sacred and musical.”[866]
The Athenians were so attached to the Cicadas, that their elders were
accustomed to fasten golden images of them in their hair. Thucidides
incidentally remarks that this custom ceased but a little before his
time. He adds, also, that the fashion prevailed, too, for a long time
with the elders of the Ionians, from their affinity to the
Athenians.[867]
This singular form, for their ornamental combs, seems to have been
adopted originally from the predilection of the Athenians for whatever
bore any affinity to themselves, who boasted of being autochthones or
aboriginal. It is sung of the Athenians:
Blithe race! whose mantles were bedeck’d
With golden grasshoppers, in sign that they
Had sprung, like those bright creatures, from the soil
Whereon their endless generations dwelt.
Mr. Michell supposes the Athenians to have imitated in this instance
their prototypes, the Egyptians; for as they, he adds, wore their
favorite symbol, the Scarabæus, in this manner, so Attic pride set up a
rival in the head-dress thus introduced by Cecrops and his
followers.[868]
From a very ancient writer,[869] we have similar ornaments ascribed to
the Samians. They also most probably derived this fashion from the early
Athenians.[870]
It seems, from the following lines of Asius,[871] that Cicadas were also
worn as ornaments on dresses:
Clad in magnificent robes, whose snow-white folds
Reach’d to the ground of the extensive earth,
And golden knobs on them like grasshoppers.
The sound of the Cicada and that of the harp were called by the Greeks
by one and the same name; and a Cicada sitting upon a harp was the usual
emblem of the science of music. This was accounted for by the following
very pleasing and elegant tale: Two rival musicians, Eunomis of Locris
and Aristo of Rhegium, when alternately playing upon the harp, the
former was so unfortunate as to break a string of his instrument, and by
which accident would certainly have lost the prize, when a Cicada,
flying to him and sitting upon his harp, supplied the place of the
broken string with its melodious voice, and so secured to him an easy
victory over his antagonist.[872]
To excel the Cicada in singing was the highest commendation of a singer,
and the music of Plato’s eloquence was only comparable to the voice of
this insect. Homer compared his good orators to the Cicadæ, “which, in
the woods, sitting on a tree, send forth a delicate voice.”[873] But
Virgil speaks of them as insects of a disagreeable and stridulous tone,
and accuses them of bursting the very shrubs with their noise,--
Et cantu querulæ rumpent arbusta Cicadæ.[874]
Moufet says: “The Cicadæ, abounding in the end of spring, do foretel a
sickly year to come, not that they are the cause of putrefaction in
themselves, but only shew plenty of putrid matter to be, when there is
such store of them appear. Oftentimes their coming and singing doth
portend the happy state of things: so also says Theocritus. Niphus saith
that what year but few of them are to be seen, they presage dearness of
victuals, and scarcity of all things else....
“The Egyptians, by a Cicada painted, understood a priest and an holy
man; the latter makers of hieroglyphics sometimes will have them to
signifie musicians, sometimes pratlers or talkative companions, but very
fondly. How ever the matter be, the Cicada hath sung very well of
herself, in my judgement, in this following distich:
Although I am an insect very small,
Yet with great virtue am endow’d withall.”[875]
Sir G. Staunton, in his account of China, remarks: “The shops of
Hai-tien, in addition to necessaries, abounded in toys and trifles,
calculated to amuse the rich and idle of both sexes, even to cages
containing insects, such as the noisy Cicada, and a large species of the
Gryllus.”[876]
S. Wells Williams tells us that the Chinese boys often capture the male
Cicada of their country, and tie a straw around the abdomen, so as to
irritate the sounding apparatus, and carry it through the streets in
this predicament, to the great annoyance of every one, for the
stridulous sound of this insect is of deafening loudness.[877]
When in Quincy, Illinois, in the summer of 1864, I was shown by a boy a
toy, which he called a “Locust,” with which he imitated the loud
rattling noise of the _Cicada septemdecim_ with great accuracy. It
consisted of a horse-hair tied to the end of a short stick, and looped
in a cap of stiff writing-paper placed over the hole of a spool. To make
the sound, then, the toy was whirled rapidly through the air, when the
stiff paper acted as a sounding-board to the vibrating hair.
At Surinam, Madame Merian tells us, the noise of the _Cicada tibicen_ is
still supposed to resemble the sound of a harp or lyre, and hence called
the _Lierman_--the harper.[878] Another species, in Ceylon, which makes
the forest re-echo with a long-sustained noise so curiously resembling
that of a cutler’s wheel, has acquired the highly appropriate name of
the _Knife-grinder_.[879]
It is said of our _Cicada septemdecim_, the so-called, but very
improperly, “Seventeen-year Locust,” that, when they first leave the
earth, when they are plump and full of juices, they have been made use
of in the manufacture of soap.
The larva of a Chinese species of Cicada, the _Flata limbata_, which
scarcely exceeds the domestic fly in size, forms a sort of grease, which
adheres to the branches of trees and hardens into wax. In autumn the
natives scrape this substance, which they call _Pela_, from off the
trees, melt, purify, and form it into cakes. It is white and glossy in
appearance, and, when mixed with oil, is used to make candles, and is
said to be superior to the common wax for use. The physicians employ it
in several diseases; and the Chinese, as we are informed by the Abbe
Grosier, when they are about to speak in public, or when any occasion is
likely to occur on which it may be necessary to have assurance and
resolution, eat an ounce of it to prevent swoonings or palpitations of
the heart.[880]
On the large cheese-like cakes of this wax, hanging in the grocers’ and
tallow-chandlers’ shops at Hankow, are often seen the inscription
written: “It mocks at the frost, and rivals the snow.” The price, in
1858, was forty dollars a picul, or about fifteen pence a pound.[881]
The Greeks, notwithstanding their veneration for the Cicada, made these
insects an article of food, and accounted them delicious. Aristotle
says, the larva, when it is grown in the earth, and become a
tettigometra (pupa), is the sweetest; when changed to the tettix, the
males at first have the best flavor, but after impregnation the females
are preferred, on account of their white ova.[882] Athenæus and
Aristophanes also mention their being eaten; and Ælian is extremely
angry with the men of his age that an animal sacred to the Muses should
be strung, sold, and greedily devoured.[883] The _Cicada septemdecim_,
Mr. Collinson in 1763 said, was eaten by the Indians of America, who
plucked off the wings and boiled them.[884]
Osbeck tells us that the _Cicada chinensis_, along with the _Buprestis
maxima_, and several species of Butterflies, is made an article of
commerce by the Chinese, being sold in their shops.[885]
Fulgoridæ--Lantern-flies.
The Lantern-fly, _Fulgora lanternaria_ of Linnæus, found in many parts
of South America, is supposed to emit a vivid light from the large hood,
or lantern, which projects from its body, and to be frequently
serviceable to benighted travelers; hence the specific name,
_lanternaria_. This story originated about a century and a half ago,
from the work of the celebrated Madame Merian, who lived several years
in Surinam. Her account contains the following anecdote: “The Indians
once brought me, before I knew that they shone by night, a number of
these Lantern-flies, which I shut up in a wooden box. In the night they
made such a noise that I awoke in a fright, and ordered a light to be
brought; not knowing whence the noise proceeded. As soon as we found
that it came from the box, we opened it; but were still much more
alarmed, and let it fall to the ground, in a fright at seeing a flame of
fire come out of it; and as so many animals as came out, so many flames
of fire appeared. When we found this to be the case, we recovered from
our fright, and again collected the insects, highly admiring their
splendid appearance.”[886]
Dr. Darwin, in a note to some lines relative to luminous insects, in his
poem, the Loves of the Plants, makes Madame Merian affirm that she drew
and finished her figure of the insect by its own light. This story is
without foundation.
The Indians of South America say and believe that the Lyerman, _Cicada
tibicen_, is changed into the Lantern-fly; and that the latter emits a
light similar to that of a lantern.[887]
This story of the Lantern-fly being luminous is the more remarkable
since the veracity of its author is unimpeached. She doubtless has
confounded it with the _Cucujus_, _Elater noctilucus_. Donovan, however,
states that the Chinese Lantern-fly, _Fulgora candelaria_, has an
illuminated appearance in the night.[888]
From the loud noise the Lantern-fly makes at night, which is said to be
somewhat between the grating of a razor-grinder and the clang of
cymbals, it is called by the Dutch, in Guiana, _Scare-sleep_.[889]
Ligon, in his History of Barbados, printed in 1673, probably refers to
this insect, when he says: “They lye all day in holes and hollow trees,
and as soon as the Sun is down they begin their tunes, which are neither
singing nor crying, but the shrillest voyces that ever I heard; nothing
can be so nearly resembled to it, as the mouths of a pack of small
beagles at a distance.” This author, however, thought this sound by no
means unpleasant. “So lively and chirping,” he continues, “the noise is,
as nothing can be more delightful to the ears, if there were not too
much of it, for the musick hath no intermission till morning, and then
all is husht.”[890]
Aphidæ--Plant-lice.
The Aphides are remarkable for secreting a sweet, viscid fluid, known by
the name of Honey-dew, the origin of which has puzzled the world for
ages. Pliny says “it is either a certaine sweat of the skie, or some
unctuous gellie proceeding from the starres, or rather a liquid purged
from the aire when it purifyeth itself.”[891]
Amyntas, in his Stations of Asia, quoted by Athenæus, gives a curious
account of the manner of collecting this article, which was supposed to
be superior to the nectar of the Bee, in various parts of the East,
particularly in Syria. In some cases they gathered the leaves of trees,
chiefly of the linden and oak, for on these the dew was most abundantly
found,[892] and pressed them together. Others allowed it to drop from
the leaves and harden into globules, which, when desirous of using, they
broke, and, having poured water on them in wooden bowls, drank the
mixture. In the neighborhood of Mount Lebanon, Honey-dew was collected
plentifully several times in the year, being caught by spreading skins
under the trees, and shaking into them the liquid from the leaves. The
Dew was then poured into vessels, and stored away for future use. On
these occasions the peasants used to exclaim, “Zeus has been raining
honey!”[893]
In the Treasvrie of Avncient and Moderne Times, we read: “_Galen_ saith,
that there fell such great quantity of this Dew (in his time) in his
Countrey of _Pergamus_, that the Countrey people (greatly delighted
therein) gave thankes therefor to _Iupiter_. _Ælianus_ writeth also that
there fell such plenty thereof in _India_, in the Region which is called
_Prasia_, and so moistened the Grasse, that the Sheepe, Kine, and Goates
feeding thereon, yeelded Milke sweete like Hony, which was very pleasing
to drinke. And when they used that Milke in any disease, they needed not
to put any Hony therein, to the end it should not corrupt in the
stomacke: as it is appointed in Hecticke Feauers, Consumption,
Tisickes, and for others that are ulcered in the intestines, as is
confirmed by the Histories of _Portugall_.”[894]
The Aphides, like many other insects, sometimes migrate in clouds; and
among other instances on record of these migrations, Mr. White informs
us that about three o’clock in the afternoon of the first of August,
1785, the people of the village of Selborne were surprised by a shower
of Aphides which fell in those parts. Persons who walked in the street
at this time found themselves covered with them, and they settled in
such numbers in the gardens and on the hedges as to blacken every leaf.
Mr. White’s annuals were thus all discolored with them, and the stalks
of a bed of onions were quite coated over for six days afterward. These
swarms, he remarks, were then no doubt in a state of emigration, and
might have come from the great hop-plantations of Kent and Sussex, the
wind being all that day in the east. They were observed at the same time
in great clouds about Farnham, and all along the vale from Farnham to
Alton.[895] A similar emigration of these insects Mr. Kirby once
witnessed, to his great annoyance, when traveling later in the year in
the Isle of Ely. The air was so full of them, that they were incessantly
flying into his eyes and nostrils, and his clothes were covered by them;
and in 1814, in the autumn, the Aphides were so abundant for a few days
in the vicinity of Ipswich, as to be noticed with surprise by the most
incurious observers.[896] Neither Mr. White nor Mr. Kirby informs us
what particular species formed these immense flights, but it is most
probable they belonged to the Hop-fly, _Aphis humuli_.
Reaumur tells us that in the Levant, Persia, and China, they use the
galls of a particular species of _Aphis_ for dyeing silk crimson.[897]
In England, the mischief caused by the Hop-fly, _Aphis humuli_, in some
seasons, as in 1802, has brought the duty of hops down from £100,000 to
£14,000.
A quite common, though erroneous, belief in England is, that Aphides are
produced, or brought by, a northern or eastern wind. Thomson has fallen
into the error; he has also confounded the mischief of caterpillars with
that of the Aphis:
For oft, engendered by the hazy north,
Myriads on myriads insect armies warp,
Keen in the poison’d breeze, and wasteful eat
Through buds and bark into the blackened core
Their eager way. A feeble race! Yet oft
The sacred sons of vengeance, on whose course
Corrosive famine waits, and kills the year.
Coccidæ--Shield-lice.
The Kermes-dye, or scarlet, made from the _Coccus ilicis_ of Linnæus, an
insect found chiefly on a species of oak, the _Quercus ilex_, in the
Levant, France, Spain, and other parts of the world, was known in the
East in the earliest ages, even before the time of Moses, and was a
discovery of the Phœnicians in Palestine, who also first employed the
murex and buccinum for the purpose of dyeing.