DEATHS-HEAD MOTH. 65 



In 1730 there appeared in Brittany a great number of 

 these moths; their cry and their singular appearance spread 

 terror in every mind. Curfe spoke of them in the pulpit, 

 and pronounced their appearance an evident sign of the anger 

 of heaven. Imaginations were affected in the highest degree ; 

 many persons made public confession; one cur6 wrote a 

 homily upon this subject, which was inserted in " Le Mercure 

 de France." The most incredulous 'said that this prodigy 

 announced a pestilence. M. de Pontchartrain, then Secretary 

 of the Marine, demanded of the Academy if any of these 

 alarms were ■well founded. The Academy, having answered 

 negatively, was strongly blamed by the Church; the fathers 

 of Trevoux proclaimed in their journal, that it was very 

 vrong to disabuse the people concerning a salutary terror. 

 " The public," said they, " has always reason to be alarmed, 

 because it is always guilty, and everything which can re- 

 mind it of the anger of an avenging God, is always to be 

 respected." 



The kind of cry which emanates from this sphinx, so 

 justly named Atropos, is produced by the rubbing of its 

 trunk against the partitions which inclose it. It has been 

 a large yellow and green caterpillar. 



The convolvulus does not expand its flowers tiU the night 

 is pretty far advanced. There is a little ugly enough cater- 

 pillar, which lives upon the convolvulus, and which becomes 

 a very pretty and singular moth;* the caterpillar is of a 

 whitish green, rather velvety. The moth is of a dazzling 

 whiteness : its wings appear as if made of ten little feathers 

 of extreme fineness. Each of the upper wings is divided into 

 two; each of the inferior wings is divided into three cut 

 parts in such a manner, that it is only with the aid of a 

 microscope we can discover they are not real feathers, much 

 more white than those of the swan, much more delicately 

 fringed than those of the ostrich. 



Night is the time in which trees breathe the oxygen which 

 is as necessary for their existence as it is for ours. In the 

 day time they will expire and return to the air much more 



* Plerophorus peniadactt/lus, — Ed. 



