DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH 



1721 



DEATH VALLEY 



Its Meaning. Man, fascinated by the spirit- 

 ual meaning of death, from the very beginning 

 of time has formulated theories concerning the 

 great "undiscovered country, from whose bourn 

 no traveler returns." To the believer in the 

 immortality of the soul death is what Long- 

 fellow expresses so beautifully in his Resigna- 

 tion: 

 There is no Death ! what seems so is transition ; 



This life of mortal breath 

 Is but a suburb of the life elysian 



Whose portal we call Death. 



It is instinctive in human nature to believe 

 that the soul lives again after the death of 

 the body. For some of the theories which have 

 had their origin in this belief, see IMMORTAL- 

 ITY; TRANSMIGRATION OF THE SOUL. 



In Literature and Myth. In legend Death 

 has usually been personified as the great enemy 

 of mankind. Sisyphus, in the old Greek tale, 

 bound Death in chains when he came to bear 

 him away, and no one on earth died until 

 Mars came and freed the captive. In Italian 

 folklore stories Death is tied up in a bag and 

 corked in a bottle by his enemies. A German 

 variation of this tale occurs in the story of 

 Gambling Hansel, who kept Death up a tree 

 for seven years. In Chaucer's Canterbury 

 Talcs the story told by the Pardoner is that of 

 three roysterers who planned to seek out 

 Death and slay him because he had killed an 

 old comrade of theirs. 



Death and its various aspects have been a 

 favorite theme of poets, and have inspired 

 many passages of high lyric beauty. It is an 

 interesting fact that poems treating of death 

 nearly always sound the optimistic note, and 

 are more courageous and cheerful in tone than 

 many whose theme is life. This is notably 

 true of such well-known poems as Bryant's 

 Thanatopsis (whose title means contemplation 

 of death), Browning's Prospicc, Tennyson's 

 Crossing the Bar and Stevenson's Requiem, and 

 it is beautifully illustrated in the following 

 lines from an English poet, William E. Henley 

 (1849-1903) : 



So be my passing ! 



My task accomplished and the long day done, 



My wages taken, and in my heart 



Some late lark singing. 



Let me be gathered to the quiet west 



The sundown splendid and serene, 



Death. B.M.W. 



DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH, a moth of the in- 

 teresting and beautiful family of sphinx moths, 

 so named because of characteristic pale-yellow 

 marks on the back of its thorax. The resem- 



blance of these marks to a skull or death's 

 head has given rise to many superstitious be- 

 liefs. The moth has a thick, hair-covered body, 

 and wings that are strong, but soft and downy, 

 and measure four or five inches across. The 

 forewings are brown, spotted and marked; the 

 hind ones are yellow, with two black bands. 

 This beautiful night-flying creature often enters 



DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH 



This insect frequently grows to a size one-half 

 larger than the illustration. 



bee hives for honey. There its squeaking noise 

 frightens the bees like the "voice" of the 

 queen, so the moth is not killed or sealed up 

 as are other robbers of hives. 



The bright-yellow caterpillar of this moth, 

 with its violet stripes and blue spots, feeds on 

 leaves of potato and tomato plants, but does 

 less harm than caterpillars of other species. 



DEATH VALLEY, a sandy plain about 150 

 miles long and thirty-five miles wide, in Inyo 

 County, Cal., close to the border of Nevada. 

 The name was applied by a company of emi- 

 grants en route in 1849 to California's newly- 



LOCATION OF DEATH VALLEY 



discovered gold fields. Nearly all of this group 

 of adventurers perished in the desert wastes. 

 The plain is about 210 feet below the level of 

 the sea and is destitute of vegetation, with 

 the exception of cacti and greasewood. The 



