OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 35 



badoes, according- to Hiiohes, the ignorant deem the 

 appearance of a certain grasshopper in their houses as 

 a sure presage of illness to some of the family^. 



One would not tliink that the excrements of insects 

 could he objects of teiror, yet so it has been. Many 

 species of Lepidoptera, when they emerge from the 

 pupa state, discharge from their anus a reddish fluid, 

 "which, in some instances, where their numbers have 

 been considerable, has produced the appearance of a 

 shower of blood ; and by this natural fact, all those 

 bloody showers, recorded by historians as preternatu- 

 ral, and regarded where they happened as fearful 

 prognostics of impending e\'\h, are stripped of their 

 terrors, and leduced to the class of events that happen 

 in the common course of nature. That insects are the 

 cause of these showers is no recent discovery ; for 

 Sleidan relates that in the year 1553 a vast multitude 

 of butterflies swarmed through a great part of Ger- 

 many, and sprinkled plants, leaves, buildings, clothes, 

 and men with bloody drops, as if it had rained blood **. 

 But the most interesting account of an event of this 

 kind is given by Reaumur, from m horn we learn that 

 in the beginning of July 1608 the suburbs of Aix, and 

 a considerable extent of country round it, were cover- 

 ed Avith what appeared to be a shower of blood. We 

 may conceive the amazement and stupor of the popu- 

 lace upon such a discovery, the alarm of the citizens, 

 the grave reasonings of the learned. All agreed how- 

 ever in attributing this appearance to the powers of 

 darkness, and in regarding it as the prognostic and 

 precursor of some direful misfortune about to befal 



* Xat. Ilht. of Barbdd. 85. '^ Quoted in Mouffet, 107, 



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