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 
