SCIENCE VERSUS SUPERSTITION. 141 



before consignment with its mute tenant to the earth ; heard, 

 too, by night-wakers, the sick and the solitary, or night- 

 watchers keeping their vigil beside the dying or the dead, 

 who can wonder that, with such concomitants, the hearts of 

 the ignorant should have often, and may sometimes still echo, 

 fearfully, the beat of the death-watch ? And, perhaps, with 

 all our little knowledge, our own might, under the like cir- 

 cumstances, do the same. 



Thus much for the wailing pipe and monotonous tabors of 

 our " Insect Dirge-Players." 



It has sometimes been objected, that in leaving no holds 

 for superstition in pulling her down from every dark corner, 

 where, bat-like, she still clings we clip at the same time the 

 lightsome wings of fancy ; that in correcting popular errors 

 we lessen the number of poetic associations. But it is not 

 so, at all events, with associations of the brighter kind. To 

 bring examples from our present subject, the mind emanci- 

 pated by knowledge may cease to feel terror from the per- 

 formances of our " Insect Dirge-Players;" but does it, in its 

 freedom, respond less gladly to the more cheerful strains of 

 *' Insect Minstrelsy "? If we may not, properly, continue to 

 designate as a " song," or as a "chirp," an instrumental sound 

 produced by attrition, as that of the grasshopper ; does the 

 grasshopper's rustic strain lose, on that account, its pleasingly 

 associate character? Does it not, on the contrary, gain 

 another feature of highest interest in connection with the 



