SCIENCE VERSUS SUPERSTITION. 141 



before consigned with its mute tenant to the earth ; heard, too, 

 by night-waters, the sick and the solitary, or night-watchers 

 keeping their vigil beside the dying or the dead, who can 

 wonder that, with such concomitants, the hearts of the ignorant 

 should have often, and may sometimes still echo, fearfully, the 

 beat of the death-watch? And, perhaps, with all our little 

 knowledge, our own might, under the like circumstances, do 

 the same. 



Thus much for the wailing pipe and monotonous tabors of 

 our " Insect Dirge-Players." 



It has sometimes been objected, that in leaving no holds for 

 superstition in pulling her down from every dark corner, 

 wdiere, bat-like, she still clings we clip at the same time the 

 lightsome wings of fancy ; that in correcting popular errors, 

 we lessen the number of poetic associations. But it is not so, 

 at all events, with associations of the brighter kind. To bring 

 examples from our present subject, the mind emancipated by 

 knowledge may cease to feel terror from the performances of 

 our "Insect Dirge-Players;" but does it, in its freedom, 

 respond less gladly to the more cheerful strains of " Insect 

 Minstrelsy " ? If we may not, properly, continue to designate 

 as a " song," or as a " chirp," an instrumental sound pro- 

 duced by attrition, as that of the grasshopper ; does the grass- 

 hopper's rustic strain lose, on that account, its pleasingly 

 associate character ? Does it not, on the contrary, gain 

 another feature of highest interest in connection with the 



