web, given about an hour before the fit of an ague, and repeated
immediately before it, is effectual in curing that troublesome, and
sometimes obstinate distemper.... The Indians about North Carolina have
great dependence on this remedy for ague, to which they are much
subject.”[1227]
“Of the cod or bags of Spiders, M. Bon caused a sort of drops to be
made, in imitation of those of Goddard, because they contain a great
quantity of volatile salt.”[1228]
Moufet, in Theatrum Insectorum, has the following: “Also that knotty
whip of God, and mock of all physicians, the Gowt, which learned men say
can be cured by no remedy, findes help and cure by a Spider layed on, if
it be taken at that time when neither sun nor moon shine, and the hinder
legs pulled off, and put into a deer’s skin and bound to the pained
foot, and be left on it for some time. Also for the most part we finde
those people to be free from the gowt of hands or feet (which few
medicaments can doe), in whose houses the Spiders breed much, and doth
beautifie them with her tapestry and hangings.... Our chirurgeons cure
warts thus: They wrap a Spider’s ordinary web into the fashion of a
ball, and laying it on the wart, they set it on fire, and so let it burn
to ashes; by this means the wart is rooted out by the roots, and will
never grow again.... I cannot but repeat a history that I formerly heard
from our dear friend worthy to be believed, Bruerus. A lustfull nephew
of his, having spent his estate in rioting and brothel-houses, being
ready to undertake anything for money, to the hazzard of his life; when
he heard of a rich matron of London, that was troubled with a timpany,
and was forsaken of all physicians as past cure, he counterfeited
himself to be a physician in practice, giving forth that he would cure
her and all diseases. But as the custom is, he must have half in hand,
and the other half under her hand, to be payed when she was cured. Then
he gave her a Spider to drink, as supposing her past cure, promising to
make her well in three dayes, and so in a coach with four horses he
presently hastes out of town, lest there being a rumor of the death of
her (which he supposed to be very neer) he should be apprehended for
killing her. But the woman shortly after by the force of the venome was
cured, and the ignorant physician, who was the author of so great a
work, was not known. After some moneths this good man returns, not
knowing what had happened, and secretly enquiring concerning the state
of that woman, he heard she was recovered. Then he began to boast
openly, and to ask her how she had observed her diet, and he excused his
long absence, by reason of the sickenesse of a principal friend, and
that he was certain that no harm could proceed from so healthful
physick; also he asked confidently for the rest of his reward, and to be
given him freely.”[1229]
“A third kind of Spiders,” says Pliny, “also known as the ‘phalangium,’
is a Spider with a hairy body, and a head of enormous size. When opened,
there are found in it two small worms, they say: these, attached in a
piece of deer’s skin, before sunrise, to a woman’s body, will prevent
conception, according to what Cæcilius, in his Commentaries, says. This
property lasts, however, for a year only; and, indeed, it is the only
one of all the anti-conceptives that I feel myself at liberty to
mention, in favour of some women whose fecundity, quite teeming with
children (plena liberis), stands in need of some such respite.”[1230]
Mr. John Aubrey, in the chapter of his Miscellanies devoted to Magick,
gives the following: “To cure a Beast that is sprung, (that is) poisoned
(It mostly lights upon Sheep): Take the little red Spider, called a
tentbob (not so big as a great pin’s-head), the first you light upon in
the spring of the year, and rub it in the palm of your hand all to
pieces: and having so done, make water on it, and rub it in, and let it
dry; then come to the beast and make water in your hand, and throw it in
his mouth. It cures in a matter of an hour’s time. This rubbing serves
for a whole year, and it is no danger to the hand. The chiefest skill is
to know whether the beast be poisoned or no.”[1231] Mr. Aubrey had this
receipt from Mr. Pacy.
In the year 1709, M. Bon, of Montpellier, communicated to the Royal
Academy of that city a discovery which he had made of a new kind of
silk, from the very fine threads with which several species of Spiders
(probably the _Aranea diadema_ and others closely allied to it) inclose
their eggs; which threads were found to be much stronger than those
composing the Spider’s web. They were easily separated, carded, and
spun, and then afforded a much finer thread than that of the silk-worm,
but, according to Reaumur, inferior to this both in luster and strength.
They were also found capable of receiving all the different dyes with
equal facility. M. Bon carried his experiments so far as to obtain two
or three pairs of stockings and gloves of this silk, which were of an
elegant gray color, and were presented, as samples, to the Academy. As
the Spiders also were much more prolific, and much more hardy than
silk-worms, great expectations were formed of benefit of the discovery.
Reaumur accordingly took up and prosecuted the inquiry with zeal. He
computed that 663,522 Spiders would scarcely furnish a single pound of
silk; and conceived that it would be impossible to provide the
necessarily immense numbers with flies, their natural food. This
obstacle, however, was soon removed, by his finding that they would
subsist very well upon earth-worms chopped, and upon the soft ends or
roots of feathers. But a new obstacle arose from their unsocial
propensities, which proved insurmountable; for though at first they
seemed to feed quietly, and even work together, several of them at the
same web, yet they soon began to quarrel, and the strongest devoured the
weakest, so that of several hundred, placed together in a box, but three
or four remained alive after a few days; and nobody could propose to
keep and feed each separately. The silk was found to be naturally of
different colors; particularly white, yellow, gray, sky-blue, and
coffee-colored brown.[1232]
A Spider raiser in France, more recently, is said to have tamed eight
hundred Spiders, which he kept in a single apartment for their
silk.[1233]
De Azara states that in Paraguay a Spider forms a spherical cocoon for
its eggs, an inch in diameter, of a yellow silk, which the inhabitants
spin on account of the permanency of the color.[1234]
The ladies of Bermuda make use of the silk of the Silk-Spider, _Epeira
clavipes_, for sewing purposes.[1235]
The Spider-web fabric has been carried so nearly to transparency (in
Hindostan) that the Emperor Aurengzebe is said to have reproved his
daughter for the indelicacy of her costume, while she wore as many as
seven thicknesses of it.[1236]
Astronomers employ the strongest thread of Spiders, the one, namely,
that supports the web, for the divisions of the micrometer. By its
ductility this thread acquires about a fifth of its ordinary
length.[1237]
Topsel, in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, has the
following, which he calls an “old and common verse:
Nos aper auditu præcellit, Aranea tactu,
Vultur odoratu, lynx visu, simia gustu.
Which may be Englished thus:
To hear, the boar, to touch, the Spider us excells,
The lynx to see, the ape to taste, the vulture for the smells.”
[1238]
“It is manifest,” says Moufet, “that Spiders are bred of some aereall
seeds putrefied, from filth and corruption, because that the newest
houses the first day they are whited will have both Spiders and cobwebs
in them.”[1239] This theory of generation from putrefaction was a
favorite one among the ancient writers; see the history of the Scorpion.
MISCELLANEOUS.
It may be new to many of our readers, who are familiar with the Elegy in
a Country Church-yard, to be told that its author was at the pains to
turn the characteristics of the Linnæan orders of insects into Latin
hexameters, the manuscript of which is still preserved in his
interleaved copy of the “Systema Naturæ.”[1240]
It is related by Boerhaave, in his Life of Swammerdam, that when the
Grand Duke of Tuscany was visiting with Mr. Thevenot the curiosities of
Holland, in 1668, he found nothing more worthy of his admiration than
the great naturalist’s account of the structure of caterpillars,--for
Swammerdam, by the skillful management of instruments of wonderful
delicacy and fineness, showed the duke in what manner the future
butterfly, with all its parts, lies neatly folded up in the caterpillar,
like a rose in the unexpanded bud. He was, indeed, so struck with this
and other wonders of the insect world, disclosed to him by the great
naturalist, that he made him the offer of twelve thousand florins to
induce him to reside at his court; but Swammerdam, from feelings of
independence, modestly declined to accept it, preferring to continue his
delightful studies at home.[1241]
There is an epitaph in the church of St. Hilary at Poictiers, beginning
“Vermibus hic ponor,” which the people interpreted to mean that a Saint
was buried there who undertook to cure children of the worms. Women,
accordingly used to scrape the tomb and administer the powder; but the
clergy, to prevent this absurdity (for Luther had arisen), erected a
barrier to keep them off. They soon began, however, to carry away for
the same purpose pieces of the wooden bars.[1242]
A diseased woman at Patton, drinking of the water in which the bones of
St. Milburge were washed, there came from her stomach “a filthie worme,
ugly and horrible to behold, having six feete, two hornes on his head,
and two on his tayle.” Brother Porter, in his Flowers of the Saints,
tells this, and adds that the “worme was shutt up in a hollow piece of
wood, and reserved afterward in the monasterie as a trophy and monument
of S. Milburg, untill, by the lascivious furie of him that destroyed all
goodness in England, that with other religious houses and monasteries,
went to ruin.” Hence the “filthie worme” was lost, and we have nothing
now instead but the Reformation.[1243]
Capt. Clarke, in his passage from Dublin to Chester, on the 2d of
September, 1733, met with a cloud “of flying insects of various sorts,”
which stuck about the rigging of the vessel in a surprising
manner.[1244]
De Geer, chamberlain to the King of Sweden, writes (iv. 63) that in
January, 1749, at Leufsta, in Sweden, and in three or four neighboring
parishes, the snow was covered with living worms and insects of various
kinds. The people assured him they fell with the snow, and he was shown
several that had dropped on people’s hats. He caused the snow to be
removed from places where these worms had been seen, and found several
which seemed to be on the surface of the snow which had fallen before,
and were covered by the succeeding. It was impossible that they could
have come there from under the ground, which was then frozen more than
three feet deep, and absolutely impervious to such insects. In 1750, he
again discovered vast quantities of insects on the snow, which covered a
large frozen lake some leagues from Stockholm. Preceding and
accompanying both these falls of insects were violent storms that had
torn up trees by the roots, and carried away to a great distance the
surrounding earth, and at the same time the insects which had taken up
their winter quarters in it.[1245] These insects were chiefly
_Brachyptera_ L., _Aphodii_, Spiders, caterpillars, and particularly the
larvæ of the _Telephorus fuscus_.[1246] Another shower of insects is
recorded to have fallen in Hungary, November 20, 1672;[1247] another,
also, in the newspapers of July 2d, 1810, to have fallen in France the
January preceding, accompanied by a shower of red snow.[1248]
In the Muses Threnodie, p. 213, we read that “many are the instances,
even to this day, of charms practised among the vulgar, especially among
the Highlands, attended with forms of prayer. In the Miscellaneous MS.,
written by Baillie Dundee, among several medicinal receipts I find an
exorcism against all kinds of worms in the body, in the name of the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to be repeated three mornings, as a certain
remedy.”[1249]
The Guahibo, Humboldt says, that “eats everything that exists above, and
everything under ground,” eats insects, and particularly scolopendras
and worms.[1250] The same traveler also says he has seen the Indian
children drag out of the earth centipedes eighteen inches long, and more
than half an inch broad, and devour them.[1251]
“The seventeene of March, 1586,” says John Stow in his Annales of
England, “a strange thing happened, the like whereof before hath not
beene heard of in our time. Master Dorington, of Spaldwicke, in the
countie of Huntington, esquier, one of his maiesties gentlemen
Pensioners, had a horse which died sodainly, and, being ripped to see
the cause of his death, there was found in the hole of the hart of the
same horse a strange worme, which lay on a round heape in a kall or skin
of the likeness of a toade, which, being taken out and spread abroad,
was in forme and fashion not easie to be described, the length of which
worme divided into many greines to the number of fiftie (spread from the
bodie like the branches of a tree), was from the snowte to the ende of
the longest greine, seventeene inches, having four issues in the
greines, from the which dropped foorth a red water; the body in bignes
round about was three inches and a halfe, the colour whereof was very
like a makerel. This monstrous worme, found in manner aforesaid,
crauling to have got away, was stabbed in with a dagger and died, which,
after being dried, was shewed to many honorable persons of the
realme.”[1252]
Dr. Sparrman, in his journey to Paarl, an inland town at the Cape of
Good Hope, having filled his insect-box with fine specimens, was obliged
to put a “whole regiment of flies and other insects” round the brim of
his hat. Having entered the house of a rich old widow troubled with the
gout, for food, he was warned by his servant that if she should happen
to see the insects he would certainly be turned out of doors for a
conjuror (hexmeester). Accordingly he was very careful to keep his hat
always turned away from her, but all would not do--the old lady
discovered the “little beasts,” and to her greater astonishment that
they were run through their bodies with pins. An immediate explanation
was demanded; and had the doctor not been just then lamenting with the
widow for her deceased husband, and giving dissertations on the dropsy
and cough that carried off the poor man, the explanation he gave would
hardly have been sufficient to quell the rage of this superstitious boor
at the thought of there being a sorcerer in her house.[1253]
In several parts of Europe quite a trade is carried on in the way of
buying and selling rare insects, chiefly the rare Alpine butterflies and
moths. The instant the entomologist steps from his carriage, in the
celebrated valley of Chamouni, with net in hand, whence he is known to
be a papillionist, he is surrounded by half a dozen Savoyard boys, from
the age of fifteen down to eight, each with a large collecting-box full
of insects in his hands for sale, and with the scientist bargains for
the insects that are found only on the mountains, and which these hardy
chaps alone can obtain. There are again insect dealers on a larger
scale, who live there, and have many of these boys in their employ; one
of which wholesale merchants, Michel Bossonney, at Martigni in the
Vallais, in the year 1829, sold 7000 insects, mostly of rare and
beautiful species. Another dealer, on a perhaps still larger scale, is
M. Provost Duval, of Geneva, a highly respectable entomologist. In 1830,
he could supply upwards of 600 species of Lepidoptera, and as many
Coleoptera, of the Swiss Alps, the south of France, and Germany, at
prices varying from one to fifteen francs each, according to their
rarity.
The advantage of this new traffic, both to the individuals engaged in it
and to science, is great. Now the _Sphinx (Deilephila) hippophaes_,
formerly sold at sixty francs each, and of which one of the first
discovered specimens was sold for two hundred francs, is so plentiful,
in consequence of the numbers collected and reared through their several
stages, by the peasants all along the course of the Arve, where the
plant, _Hippophae rhamöides_, on which the larvæ feed, and the imago
takes its specific name, grows in profusion, that a specimen costs but
three francs. A general taste also for the science, and an appreciation
for beauty, is spread by the more striking Alpine species, such as
_Parnassius apollo_ and _Calichroma alpina_, not only among the
travelers who buy them for their beauty, who before would hardly deign
to look upon an insect, but among the more ignorant Alpine collectors
themselves.[1254]
Navarette, under the head of “Insects and Vermin,” speaks of an animal
which the Chinese call Jen Ting, or Wall-dragon, because it runs up and
down walls. It is also, says this traveler, called the Guard of the
Palace, and this for the following reason: The emperors were accustomed
to make an ointment of this insect, and some other ingredients, with
which they anointed their concubines’ wrists, as the mark of it
continued as long as they had not to do with man; but as soon as they
did so, it immediately vanished, by which their honesty or falsehood was
discovered. Hence it came that this insect was called the Guard of the
Court, or, of the court ladies. Navarette laments that all men have not
a knowledge of this wonderful ointment.[1255]
Navarette tells us he once caught (in China?) a small insect that was
injurious to poultry--“a very deformed insect, and of a strange
shape”--when, as soon as it was known, several women ran to him to beg
its _tail_. He gave it to them, and they told him it was of excellent
use when dried, and made into powder, “being a prodigious help to women
in labor, to forward their delivery, if they drank it in a little
wine.”[1256]
The Irish have a large beetle of which strange tales are believed; they
term it the Coffin-cutter, and deem it in some way connected with the
grave and purgatory.[1257]
Turpin, in his History of Siam, says: “There is a very singular animal
in Siam ... bred in the dung of elephants. It is entirely black, its
wings are strong, and its head extremely curious: it is furnished on the
top with several points, in the form of a trunk, and a small horn in the
middle: it has four large feet, which raise it more than an inch from
the ground: its back seems to be one very hard entire shell. It flies to
the very top of the cocoa-trees, of which it eats the heart, and often
kills them, if a remedy is not applied. Children play with them, and
make them fight.”[1258]
General Count Déjeau, Aid-de-camp to Napoleon Bonaparte, was so anxious,
says Jaeger, in his Life of North American Insects, to increase the
number of specimens in his entomological cabinet, that he even availed
himself of his military campaigns for this purpose, and was continually
occupied in collecting insects and fastening them with pins on the
outside of his hat, which was always covered with them. The Emperor, as
well as the whole army, were accustomed to see General Déjeau’s head
thus singularly ornamented, even when in battle. But the departed
spirits of those murdered insects once had their revenge on him; for, in
the battle of Wagram, in 1809, and while he was at the side of Napoleon,
a shot from the enemy struck Déjeau’s head, and precipitated him
senseless from his horse. Soon, however, recovering from the shock, and
being asked by the Emperor if he was still alive, he answered, “I am not
dead; but, alas! my insects are all gone!” for his hat was literally
torn to pieces.[1259]
Professor Jaeger tells also the following anecdote of another passionate
naturalist: The celebrated Prince Paul of Würtemberg, whom Mr. Jaeger
met in 1829 at Port-au-Prince, being one day at the latter’s house, shed
tears of envy when he showed him the gigantic beetle Actæon, which, only
a short time before, had been presented to him by the Haytien Admiral
Banajotti, he having found it at the foot of a cocoa-nut tree on his
plantation.[1260]
While traveling in Poland, Professor Jaeger visited the highly
accomplished Countess Ragowska, at her country residence, when she
exhibited her fine, scientifically-arranged collection of butterflies
and other insects, and told him that she had personally instructed her
children in botany, history, and geography by means of her entomological
cabinet--botany, from the plants on which the various larvæ feed;
history, from the names, as Menelaus, Berenice, etc., given as specific
names to the perfect insects; and geography, from the native countries
of the several specimens.[1261] From the scientific names of insects,
and the technical terms employed in their study, quite a knowledge of
Latin and Greek, and philology in general, might also be gained.
In R. Brookes’ “Natural History of Insects, with their properties and
uses in medicine,” we find the following statement: “There have been the
solid shells of a sort of Beetle brought to England, that were found on
the eastern coast of Africa, over against part of the Island of
Madagascar, which the natives hang to their necks, and make use of them
as whistles to call their cattle together.”[1262] What this “sort of
Beetle” is I have not been able yet to determine.
Mr. Fitch W. Taylor, chaplain to the squadron commanded by Commodore
Geo. C. Read, gives a translation of several Siamese books, and among
others the Siamese Dream-book. It was translated by Mrs. Davenport, and
the subject is thus introduced:
“In former times a great prophet and magician, who had much wisdom and
could foretell all future events, gave the following interpretation of
signs and dreams. Whosoever sees signs and visions, if he wishes to know
whether they forebode good or evil, whether happiness or misery, if he
dream of any animals, insects, birds, or fishes, and wishes to know the
interpretation, let him examine this book.”
Of these signs and dreams I make extract of those which refer to
insects, as follows:
“If a person be alone, and an insect or reptile fall before the face,
but the individual see it only without touching it, it denotes that some
heavenly being will bestow great blessings on him. If it fall to the
right side, it denotes that all his friends, wherever scattered abroad,
shall again meet him in peace. If it fall behind the person, it denotes
that he shall be slandered and maliciously talked of by his friends and
acquaintances. If in falling it strike the face, it denotes that the
individual will soon be married. If it strike the right arm, it denotes
that the individual’s wishes, whatever they are, shall be accomplished.
If it strike the left hand, it denotes that the individual will lose his
friends by death. If it strike the foot, it denotes that whatever
trouble the individual may have had, all shall vanish, and he shall
reach the summit of happiness. If, after touching the foot, it should
crawl upward toward the head, it denotes that the individual shall be
raised to high office by the rulers of his country. If it crawl to the
right side, it denotes that the person shall hear bad tidings of some
absent friend. If the insect or reptile fall without touching the body,
and immediately flee toward the northeast, it denotes deep but not
lasting trouble; if toward the northwest, it denotes that the person
shall receive numerous and valuable presents; if toward the southeast,
it denotes that he shall receive great riches, and afterwards go to a
distant land; or that he shall go to a distant land, and there amass
great wealth.
“If an animal, insect, bird, or reptile, cross the path of any one as he
walks along, the animal coming from the right, let him not proceed--some
calamity will surely happen to him in the way. If the animal come from
the left, let him proceed--good fortune shall surely happen to him. If
the animal proceed before him in the same road in which he intends to
travel, it denotes good fortune....