OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 



27 



In another point of view entomological information is very 

 useful. A great deal of unnecessary mischief is produced^ 

 and unnecessary uneasiness occasioned, by what are called 

 vulgar errors, and that superstitious reliance upon charms, 

 which prevents us from having recourse to remedies that are 

 really efficacious. Thus, for instance, eating figs and sweet 

 things has been supposed to generate lice.^ Nine larvaa of 

 the moth of the wild teasel enclosed in a reed or goose quill 

 have been reckoned a remedy for ague.^ Matthiolus gravely 

 affirms that every oak-gall contains either a fly, a spider, or 

 a worm; and that the first foretells war, the second pes- 

 tilence, and the third famine.^ In Sweden the peasants look 

 upon the grub of the cock-chafer as furnishing an unfailing 

 prognostic whether the ensuing winter will be mild or 

 severe; if the animal have a bluish hue (a circumstance 

 which arises from its being replete with food) they affirm it 

 will be mild, but, on the contrary, if it be white the weather 

 will be severe ; and they carry this so far as to foretell, that 

 if the anterior part be white and the posterior blue, the cold 

 will be most severe at the beginning of the winter. Hence 

 they call this grub Bemdrkelse-mask, or prognostic worm.'^ 

 A similar augury as to the harvest is drawn by the Danish 

 peasants from the mites which infest the common dung 

 beetle (^Geotrupes stercorarius), called in Danish Skarnhosse 

 or Torbist. If there are many of these mites between the 

 fore feet, they believe that there will be an early harvest, 

 but a late one if they abound between the hind feet.^ The 

 appearance of the death's head hawk-moth {Aclierontia 

 Atrojjos) has in some countries produced the most violent 

 alarm and trepidation amongst the people, who, because it 

 emits a plaintive sound, and is marked with what looks like 

 a death's head upon its back, regarded it as the messenger of 

 pestilence and death. ^ We learn from Linne that a similar 

 superstition, built upon the black hue and strange aspect 



1 Amoreux, 276. ^ Rai, Cat. Cant. 45. Jlist. Ins. 341. 



3 Comment, in Dioscor. 1. 1. c. 23. 214. Lesser L. ii. 280. 



4 De Geer, iv. 275, 276. 



5 Detharding de Insectis Coleopteris Danicis, 9. 



6 Reaum. ii. 289. This insect and its caterpillar is finely figured in 

 Mr. Curtis's elegant and scientific British Entomology, t. 147. 



