122 OMKXSETTKR : 



the meticulous heads of nurses and grandmothers, " as many 

 such are firm in the belief that 



"The solemn death watch clicks the hour of death." 



Dean Swift, whose trenchant pen in "Gulliver's Travels" 

 laid bare the foibles of his time, tried to perform this useful 

 task by means of ridicule. The antidote was prescribed 

 as follows : — 



' ' A wood worm 



That lies in old wood, like a hare in her form, 



With teeth or with claws, it will bite, it will scratch ; 



And chambermaids christen this worm a death-watch ; 



Becanse, like a watch, it always cries click. 



Then woe be to those in the house that are sick ! 



For, sure as a gun, they will give up the ghost. 



If the maggot cries click when it scratches the post. 



Hut a kettle of scalding hot water injected, 



Infallibly cures the timber affected : 



The omen is broken, the danger is over, 



Tiie maggot will die, and the sick will recover." 



In the above the larva is blamed for the disturbance. 

 Later observers incline to charge it to the mature insect. 



Acherontia Atropos, a British species more generally known 

 as the death's head hawk moth, has been a source of terror 

 to the superstitious. Bearing upon the tipper side of the 

 thorax the figtire of a human skull, it lacks but the cross 

 bones for the hall mark of Captain Kidd. In hal)it the moth 

 is known to have patterned after the dead freebooter, in that 

 it has viewed the honeyed content of the bee hive as its 

 lawful prey. Bees are jealous of such intrusion, but in this 

 case the pirate, without bodily harm, gets away with the 

 goods. That same mournful cry, likened to the plaint of a 

 captive mouse, which, taken with death's symbol, has roused 

 the alarm of many a country swain, overcomes the angry 

 chidings of the bees, and the despoilation proceeds with 

 impunity. However, when the death's head hawk moth was 

 introduced by the learned liuber into a nest of humble bees, 



