ARCTIID^ — WOOLLY-BEAR MOTHS. 243 



% 

 One summer niglit, says a legend old, 



A Moth a Firefly sought to woo : 

 "Oh, wed me, I pray, thou bright star-child, 



To win thee there's nothing I'd dare not do." 



"If thou art sincere," the Firefly cried, 



" Go — bring me a light that will equal my own ; 



Not until then will I deign be thy bride ;" — 

 Undaunted the Moth heard her mocking tone. 



Afar he beheld a brilliant torch, 



Forward he dashed, on rapid wing, 

 Into the light to bear it hence ; — 



When he fell a scorched and blighted thing. — 



Still ever the Moths in hope to win. 

 Unheeding the lesson, the gay Firefly, 



Dash, reckless, the dazzling torch within, 

 And, vainly striving, fall and die ! 



Washington, D. C, June 24, 1864. 



Moufet savs : "Our North, as well as our West coun- 

 trymen, call it (the Moth, Phalaina) Saule, i. e. Psychen, 

 Animam, the soul ; because some silly people in old time 

 did fancy that the souls of the dead did fly about in the 

 night seeking light. "^ "Pliny commends a goat's liver to 

 drive them away, yet he shews not the means to use it."^ 



One of the most highly prized curiosities in the collec- 

 tion of Horace Walpole, was the silver bell with which the 

 popes used to curse the caterpillars. This bell was the 

 work of Benvenuto Cellini, one of the most extraordinary 

 men of his extraordinary age, and the relievos on it repre- 

 senting caterpillars, butterflies, and other insects, are said 

 to have been wonderfully executed.^ 



In Purchas's Pilgrims, we read of worms being sprinkled" 

 with holy water to kill them.'' 



Apuleius says, that if you take the caterpillars from 

 another garden, and boil them in water with anethum, and 

 let them cool, and besprinkle the herbs, you will destroy 

 the existing caterpillars.^ 



1 Theatr. Ins., p. 88. Topsel's Hist, of Beasts, p. 958. 



2 Moufet, p. 108. Topsel, p. 975. 



3 Monthly Mag., 7 (Pt. I.) xxxix. 1799. 

 * Pilgrims, ii. 1034. 



^ Owen's Geoponika, ii. 99. 



