246 NOCTUID^— ANTLER-MOTH, CUT- WORM, ETC. 



twigs bound tocretlicr l)y threads, till the whole resembles a 

 miniature Roman fasces; in fact, an African species of these 

 insects has obtained the name of " Lictor." The Germans 

 have denominated the pjroup Sacktrager, and the Singhalese 

 call them Darra-kattea or "billets of fire-wood," and regard 

 the inmates, Tennent says, as human beings, who, as a pun- 

 ishment for stealing wood in some former state of exist- 

 ence, have been condemned to undergo a metempsychosis 

 under the form of these insects.^ 



Noctuidse — Antler-moth, Cut-worm, etc. 



The Antler-moth, Noctua graminis, Linn., has been par- 

 ticularly observed in Sweden, Norway, Northern Germany, 

 and even in Greenland, where it does great mischief to 

 grass-plots and meadows. It is recorded to have done 

 very great injury in the eastern mountains of Georgenthal, 

 as well as at Toplitz in Bohemia, where larvse were in such 

 large numbers that in four days and a half 200 men found 

 23 bushels of them, or 4,500,000 in the 60 bushels of mould 

 which they examined. In Germany it seems to be con- 

 fined to high and dry districts, and it never appears there 

 in wet meadows, but its devastations are sometimes most 

 extensive, as happened in the Hartz territory in 1816 and 

 'IT, when whole hills that in the evening were clad in the 

 finest green, were brown and bare the following morning; 

 and such vast numbers of the caterpillars were there that 

 the ruts of the roads leading to the hills were full of them, 

 and the roads being covered with them were even rendered 

 slippery and dirty by their being crushed in some places.^ 



The notorious astrologer, William Lilly, alluding to the 

 comet which appeared in 1677, sa3^s: ''All comets signify 

 wars, terrors, and strange events in the world;" and gives 

 the following curious explanation of the prophetic nature of 

 these bodies : *' The spirits, well knowing what accidents 

 shall come to pass, do form a star or comet, and give it 



1 Tennent, Nat. Hist, of Ceylon, p. 431. 



' KoUar's Treat, on Ins., Lond. Trans., p. 105-36. Curtis's Farm 

 Insects, p. 507. 



