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

Sphingidæ—Hawk-moths.

To the superstitious imaginations of the Europeans, the conspicuous markings on the back of a large evening moth, the Sphinx Atropos, represent the human skull, with the thigh-bones crossed beneath; hence is it called the Death’s-head Moth, the Death’s-head Phantom, the Wandering Death-bird, etc. Its cry,[797] which closely resembles the noise caused by the creaking of cork, or the plaintive squeaking of a mouse, certainly more than enough to frighten the ignorant and superstitious, is considered the voice of anguish, the moaning of a child, the signal of grief; and it is regarded “not as the creation of a benevolent being, but as the device

of evil spirits”—spirits, enemies to man, conceived and fabricated in the dark; and the very shining of its eyes is supposed to represent the fiery element whence it is thought to have proceeded. Flying into their apartments in the evening, it at times extinguishes the light, foretelling war, pestilence, famine, and death to man. The sudden appearance of these insects, we are informed by Latrielle, during a season while the people were suffering from an epidemic disease, tended much to confirm the notions of the superstitious in that district, and the disease was attributed by them entirely to their visitation.[798] Jaeger says, at a very recent day, that this large Moth first attracted his “attention during the prevalence of a severe and fatal epidemic, and of course nothing more was necessary than its appearance at such a time to induce an ignorant people to believe it the veritable prophet and forerunner of death. A curate in Bretagne, France,” continues this author, “made a most horrible and fear-exciting description of this animal, describing the very loud and dreadful sound which it emitted as a sort of lamentation for the awful calamity which was coming on the earth.”[799] Reaumur informs us that all the members of a female convent in France were thrown into the greatest consternation at the appearance of one of these insects, which happened to fly in during the evening at one of the windows of the dormitory.[800]

In the Isle of France, the natives believe that the dust (scales) cast from the wings of the Death’s-head Moth, in flying through an apartment, is productive of blindness to the visual organs on which it falls.[801]

There is a quaint superstition in England that the Death’s-head Moth has been very common in Whitehall ever since the martyrdom of Charles I.[802]

Illustrative of the tough texture of the skin with which many soft larvæ are provided for protection, the following may be instanced: Bonnet squeezed under water the caterpillar of the privet Hawk-moth, Sphinx ligustris, till it was as flat and empty as the finger of a glove, yet within an

hour it became plump and lively as if nothing had happened.[803]

The name Sphinx is applied to this genus of insects from a fancied resemblance between the attitude assumed by the larvæ of several of the larger species, when disturbed, and that of the Egyptian Sphinx.