BY-GONE SUPERSTITIONS. 135 



captured out at sea. The ignorant fears excited by these 

 remarkable moths have assumed, in different countries and 

 times, various forms of absurdity. In the Isle of France, as 

 we are told by St. Pierre, the dust from off the wings of the 

 death's-head was believed to cause blindness, merely by flight 

 through an apartment. 



Invested, through the mortal emblem on its tabard, with 

 the imaginary office of herald to the Fates, disease and death 

 were anticipated in the wake of its heavy pinions, or thought 

 to be announced by its mournful cry. A whole sisterhood of 

 nuns could be terrified by the apparition of a single death's- 

 head within their holy precincts ; and a parish priest, desirous 

 to work by terror on the consciences of his flock, could find 

 for his purpose a powerful instrument in the appearance of 

 this harmless insect, which, in the year 1730, was described 

 by a cure of Bretagne, as "rev$tu de tout ce qu'une pompe 

 funebre offre de plus triste" Even its wings appeared to his 

 deluding or deluded fancy, to be " marquetees comme une esp&ce 

 de drap mortuaire." 



The educated bigots, who lived in the days of Eeaumur, 

 could hardly help being, themselves, comparatively enlightened 

 as to the natural causes of certain phenomena looked on before 

 as the work of devils or of sorcerers, such as the shower of 

 blood at Aix in 1608, discovered to be the production, not of 

 demons, but of butterflies. But nothing made these tyrants 

 of the soul more angry than the boldness of advancing science, 



