Moufet says: “They that sell woollen clothes use to wrap up the skin of a bird called the king’s-fisher among them, or else hang one in the shop, as a thing by a secret antipathy that Moths cannot endure.”[862]
Among the various contrivances resorted to as a safeguard against the Bee-moth, Galleria cereana, Fabricius, perhaps the most ingenious is that, mentioned by Langstroth, of “governing the entrances of all the hives by a long lever-like hen-roost, so that they may be regularly closed by the crowing and cackling tribe when they go to bed at night, and opened again when they fly from their perch to greet the merry morn.”[863]
An intelligent man informed Langstroth that he paid ten dollars to a “Bee-quack” professing to have an infallible secret for protecting Bees against the Moth; and, after the quack had departed with his money, learned that the secret consisted in “always keeping strong stocks.”[864]
ORDER VII.
HOMOPTERA.
Cicadidæ—Harvest-flies.
The Cicadas, C. plebeja, Linn., called by the ancient Greeks, (by whom, as well as by the Chinese, they were kept in cages for the sake of their song,) Tettix, seem to have been the favorites of every Grecian bard, from Homer and Hesiod to Anacreon and Theocritus. Supposed to be perfectly harmless, and to live only upon dew, they were addressed by the most endearing epithets, and were regarded as almost divine. Thus sings the muse of Anacreon:
Happy creature! what below
Can more happy live than thou?
Seated on thy leafy throne,