60 BURMA, ITS PEOPLE AXD PRODUCTIOSS. 



handful of salt in eacli pan, -n-hicli does not interfere witli the desired evaporation, 

 but renders the water or brine unfit for the development of the larvte. If, too, all 

 bath rooms about a house had the water tubs and pans emptied every day, the 

 mosquito plagne would bo greatly reduced, as no stagnant water, no mosquitoes. 



Family Tipulidse. 



PTEROCOSMrS TELUTINTJS, "Walk. 



Family Cecidomyiidse. 



To this family belongs the ' Ifessian Fiy,' so destructive to wheat. 



Family Culicidse. 



Sub-order APHANIPTFRA. 



This is an aberrant group embracing a single family, Pulicida, to which the 

 commoa flea belongs [Fulex irritans). 



Order LEPIDOPTERA. 



Dr. Mason thus prefaced the subject of Buttoi flies, of which, however, his 

 original list was meagre in the extreme: — " When a person dies, the Burmese say, 

 the soul or sentient principle leaves the body in tlie form of a butterfly. This too 

 was the faith of the Greeks, more than two thousand years ago. Among the ancients, 

 wlien a man e.xpircd, a butterfly appeared fluttering above as if rising from the 

 mouth of the deceased. The coincidence is tlie more reniarkable the closer it is 

 examined. The ' Psyche ' or soul of the Greeks represented by the butterfly, was 

 the Lite, the perceptive principle, and not the Pneuma or spiritual nature. So the 

 Burraans regard the butterfly in man, as tliat principle of his nature which perceives, 

 but not that of which moral actions are predicated. If a person is startled or 

 frightened so as to be astounded for the moment, they say, ' His lutterjly has 

 departed.' When a person is unconscious of all that is passing around him in sleep, 

 the butterfly is supposed to be absent ; but on its return the person awakes, and 

 what the butterfly has seen in its wanderings constitutes dreams. 



"The Greeks and the Burmese undoubtedly derived those ideas from a common 

 origin. In the Buddhist legends of the creation of man, which originated in Central 

 Asia, it is stated that when man was formed, a caterpillar or worm was introduced 

 into the body, which, after remaining ten lunar months, brought forth the living 

 man, and hence the reason why a butterfly is supposed to leave the body at death. 

 Thus the oateqiillar or larva state, the papa or chrysalis, and the imago or perfect 

 insect, are, to the Buddhist, representatives of man in his origin from the earth, in 

 his subsequent conception in the womb, and in his perfect state as a sentient being, 

 while the successive changes typify his endless transmigrations. This is a wonderful 

 land f^r butterflies. Birds of passage are common in most countries, but butterflies 

 of passage are nowhere on record. Yet such are sometimes seen in Burma. 

 "Westwood says, ' Various species of butterflies are remarkable for their periodical or 

 irregular appearance ; of these, the species of Colias or ' clouded yellows ' are pre- 

 eminent.' It is remarkable that butterflies of this same tribe of 'yellows' often 

 appear in clouds in Burma and pass over the country in flocks, like the pigeons 

 that annually migrate over Kentucky and other Western States of America." 



In these days, when the value of the economic study of insects is fully recog- 

 nized, and tlio elevating character of tlie study of even the humblest branches of 

 Zoology not less so, it is curious to call to mind the change of feeling in this respect 

 which a century has wrought. All Englishmen will remember the ridiciilous light 

 in which the florist and entomologist are depicted in the 'Dunciad': as represen- 

 tatives of naturalists in general ; but tlu' feeling was that of the age rather than of 

 the Twickenham satirist personally, and is equally displayed by a contemporary poet, 



