THE DEATH'S-HEAD MOTH. 223 



should have seen only beauty and wisdom, he has often 

 found terror and dismay. The yellow and brown tailed 

 moths, the deathwatch, our snails, as mentioned in 

 p. 231, and many others, have all been the subjects of 

 his fears ; but the dread excited in England by the ap- 

 pearance, noises, or increase of insects, are petty appre- 

 hensions, when compared with the horror that the pres- 

 ence of this acherontia occasions to some of the more 

 fanciful and superstitious natives of northern Europe^ 

 maintainers of the wildest conceptions. A letter is now 

 before me from a correspondent in German Poland, 

 where this insect is a common creature, and so abound- 

 ed in 1824, that my informer collected fifty of them in 

 the potato fields of his village, where they call them 

 the " death's-head phantom," the " wandering death- 

 bird," &c. The markings on its back represent to these 

 fertile imaginations the head of a perfect skeleton, with 

 the limb bones crossed beneath ; its cry becomes the 

 voice of anguish, the moaning of a child, the signal of 

 grief; it is regarded not as the creation of a benevolent 

 being, but the device of evil spirits, spirits enemies to 

 man, conceived and fabricated in the dark; and the 

 very shining of its eyes is thought to represent the 

 fiery element whence it is supposed to have proceeded. 

 Flying into their apartments in the evening, it at times 

 extinguishes the light, foretelling war, pestilence, hun- 

 ger, death to man and beast. We pity, rather than ridi- 

 cule these fears ; their consequences being painful 

 anxiety of mind and suffering of body. However, it 

 seems these vain imaginations are flitting away before 

 the light of reason and experience. In Germany as in 

 England, they were first observed on the jasmine, but 

 now exclusively upon the potato, though they will enter 

 the bee-hives, to feed on the honey found in them. This 

 insect has been thought to be peculiarly gifted in having 

 a voice, and squeaking like a mouse, when handled. or 

 disturbed ; but in truth no insect that we know of has 

 the requisite organs to produce a genuine voice. They 

 emit sounds by other means, probably all external. 

 The grasshopper and the cricket race effect their well- 

 known and often wearisome chirpings by grating their 



