BY-GONE SUPERSTITIONS. 135 



captured out at sea. The ignorant fears excited by these 

 remarkable moths have assumed, in different countries and 

 times, various forms of absurditv. In the Isle of Prance, as 



V 



we are told by St. Pierre, the dust from off the wings of the 

 death's-head was believed to cause blindness, merely by flight 

 through an apartment. 



Invested, through the mortal emblem on its tabard, with the 

 imaginary office of herald to the Fates, disease and death were 

 anticipated in the wake of its heavy pinions, or thought to be 

 announced by its mournful cry. A whole sisterhood of nuns 

 could be terrified by the apparition of a single death's-head 

 within their holy precincts ; and a parish priest, desirous to 

 work by terror on the consciences of his flock, could find for 

 his purpose a powerful instrument in the appearance of this 

 harmless insect, which, in the year 1730, was described by a 

 cure of Bretagne, as " revetu de tout ce qu'mie pompe funebre 

 offre de plus triste" Even its wings appeared to his deluding 

 or deluded fancy, to be " marquetees comme une espece de drap 

 inortuaire" 



The educated bigots, who lived in the days of Beaumur, 

 could hardly help being, themselves, comparatively enlightened 

 as to the natural causes of certain phenomena looked on before 

 as the work of devils or of sorcerers, such as the shower of blood 

 at Aix in 1608, discovered to be the production, not of 

 demons, but of butterflies. But nothing made these tyrants 

 of the soul more angry than the boldness of advancing science, 



