Curious Facts in the History of Insects; Including Spiders and Scorpions. / A Complete Collection of the Legends, Superstitions, Beliefs, and Ominous Signs Connected with Insects; Together with Their Uses in Medicine, Art, and as Food; and a Summary of Their Remarkable Injuries and Appearances.

by Frank Cowan

Arctiidæ—Wooly-bear Moths.

In 1783, the larvæ of the Moth, Arctia chrysorrhœa, were so destructive in the neighborhood of London that subscriptions were opened to employ the poor in cutting off and collecting the webs; and it is asserted that not less than eighty bushels were collected and burnt in one day in the parish of Clapham. And even in some places prayers were offered up in the churches to avert the calamities of which they were supposed by the ignorant to be the forerunner.[836]

If a caterpillar spins its cocoon in a house, it foretells its desolation by death; if in your clothes, it warns you you will wear a shroud before the year is out. This superstition obtains in the Middle States, Virginia, and Maryland.

If Moths, flying in a candle, put it out, it forebodes a calamity amounting to almost death. This superstition is pretty general.

Why Moths fly in a candle: Kempfer tells us, there is found in Japan an insect, which, by reason of its incomparable beauty, is kept by the Japanese ladies among the curiosities of their toilets. He calls it a Night-fly, and describes it as being “about a finger long, slender, round-bodied, with four wings, two of which are transparent and hid under a pair of others, which are shining as it were polished, and most curiously adorned with blue and golden lines and spots.” The following little fable, which accounts so beautifully for the flying of Moths in a candle, owes its origin to the unparalleled beauty of this insect, and is well worthy of being preserved: The Japanese say that all other Night-flies (Moths, etc.) fall in love with this particular one, who, to get rid of their importunities, maliciously bids them, under the pretense of trying their constancy, to go and bring to her fire. And the blind lovers, scrupling not to obey her command, fly to the nearest fire or candle, in which they never fail to burn themselves to death.[837]

The following verses, embodying the above fable (except in several minor particulars) are from the pen of Mrs. A. L. Ruter Dufour:

One summer night, says a legend old,

A Moth a Firefly sought to woo:

“Oh, wed me, I pray, thou bright star-child,

To win thee there’s nothing I’d dare not do.”

“If thou art sincere,” the Firefly cried,

“Go—bring me a light that will equal my own;

Not until then will I deign be thy bride;”—

Undaunted the Moth heard her mocking tone.

Afar he beheld a brilliant torch,

Forward he dashed, on rapid wing,

Into the light to bear it hence;—

When he fell a scorched and blighted thing.—

Still ever the Moths in hope to win,

Unheeding the lesson, the gay Firefly,

Dash, reckless, the dazzling torch within,

And, vainly striving, fall and die!

Washington, D. C., June 24, 1864.

Moufet says: “Our North, as well as our West countrymen, call it (the Moth, Phalaina) Saule, i.e. Psychen, Animam, the soul; because some silly people in old time did fancy that the souls of the dead did fly about in the night seeking light.”[838] “Pliny commends a goat’s liver to drive them away, yet he shews not the means to use it.”[839]

One of the most highly prized curiosities in the collection of Horace Walpole, was the silver bell with which the popes used to curse the caterpillars. This bell was the work of Benvenuto Cellini, one of the most extraordinary men of his extraordinary age, and the relievos on it representing caterpillars, butterflies, and other insects, are said to have been wonderfully executed.[840]

In Purchas’s Pilgrims, we read of worms being sprinkled with holy water to kill them.[841]

Apuleius says, that if you take the caterpillars from another garden, and boil them in water with anethum, and let them cool, and besprinkle the herbs, you will destroy the existing caterpillars.[842]

Pliny says, that “if a woman having a catamenia strips herself naked, and walks round a field of wheat, the caterpillars, worms, beetles, and other vermin, will fall off the ears of the grain!” This important discovery, according to Metrodurus of Scepsos, was first made in Cappadocia; where, in consequence of such multitudes of “Cantharides” being found to breed there, it was the practice for women to walk through the middle of the fields with their garments tucked up above the thighs.[843] Columella[844] has described this practice in verse, and Ælian[845] also mentions it. Pliny says further that in other places, again, it is the usage of women to go barefoot, with the hair disheveled and the girdle loose: due precaution, however, he seriously observes, must be taken that this is not done at sunrise, for if so the crop will wither and dry up.[846] Apuleius,[847] Columella,[848] and Palladius[849] relate the same story. Constantinus, likewise, whose verses, as translated in Moufet’s Theater of Insects, are as follows:

But if against this plague no art prevail,

The Trojan arts will do’t, when others fail.

A woman barefoot with her hair untied,

And naked breasts must walk as if she cried,

And after Venus’ sports she must surround

Ten times, the garden beds and orchard ground.

When she hath done, ’tis wonderful to see,

The caterpillars fall off from the tree,

As fast as drops of rain, when with a crook,

For acorns or apples the tree is shook.[850]

This remarkable superstitious remedy for destroying caterpillars was frequently practiced by the Indians of America. Schoolcraft, treating of the peculiar superstitions connected with the menstrual lodge of these people, says:

“This superstition does not alone exert a malign influence, or spell, on the human species. Its ominous power,

or charm, is equally effective on the animate creation, at least on those species which are known to depredate on their little fields and gardens. To cast a protective spell around these, and secure the fields against vermin, insects, the sciurus, and other species, as well as to protect the crops against blight, the mother of the family chooses a suitable hour at night, when the children are at rest and the sky is overcast, and having completely divested herself of her garments, trails her machecota behind her, and performs the circuit of the little field.”[851]

The fat of bears, says Topsel, “some use superstitiously beaten with oil, wherewith they anoynt their grape-sickles when they go to vintage, perswading themselves that if nobody know thereof, their tender vine-branches shall never be consumed by caterpillars. Others attribute this to the vertue of bears’ blood.”[852]

Nicander used “a caterpillar to procure sleep: for so he writes; and Hieremias Martius thus translates him:

Stamp but with oyl those worms that eat the leaves,

Whose backs are painted with a greenish hue,

Anoint your body with ’t, and whilst that cleaves,

You shall with gentle sleep bid cares adieu.”[853]

Of a caterpillar that feeds upon cabbage leaves, the Eruca officinalis of Schroder, Dr. James says: “Bruised, or a powder of them, raise a blister like cantharides, and take off the skin. Moufet says, they will cause the teeth to fall out of their sockets, and Hippocrates writes, that they are good for a Quinsey.”[854]