Wanley knew a nun in the monastery of St. Clare, who at the sight of a beetle was affected in the following strange manner. It happened that some young girls, knowing her disposition, threw a beetle into her bosom, which when she perceived, she immediately fell into a swoon, deprived of all sense, and remained four hours in cold sweats. She did not regain her strength for many days after, but continued trembling and pale.[235]
Galerucidæ—Turnip-fly, etc.
The striped Turnip-beetle, Haltica nemorum, commonly called the Turnip-fly, Turnip-flea, Earth-flea-beetle, Black-jack, etc., is a well known species from the ravages the perfect insect commits upon the turnip. In Devonshire, England, in the year 1786, the loss caused by these insects alone was valued at £100,000 sterling. And in the spring of 1837, the vines in the neighborhood of Montpellier were attacked to so great an extent by another species, Haltica oleracea, in the perfect state, that fears were entertained for the plants, and religious processions were instituted for the purpose of exorcising the insects.[236]
Anatolius says that if the seeds of radishes, turnips, and other esculents be sown in the hide of a tortoise, the plants when grown will not be eaten by the fly, nor hurt by noxious animals or birds.[237] Paladius has also related the method of drying the seeds in the hide of this animal,[238] and of sowing them.[239]
ORDER II.
EUPLEXOPTERA.
Forficulidæ—Ear-wigs.
The vulgar opinion that the Ear-wig, Forficula auricularia, seeks to introduce itself into the ear of human beings, and causes much injury to that organ, is very ancient, but not founded on fact, for they are perfectly harmless. To this opinion the names of this insect in almost all European languages point: as in English, Ear-wig (from Anglo-Saxon eare, the ear, and wigga, a worm; hence, also, our word wiggle), in French, Perce-oreille, and in the German, Ohrwurm. But, according to some writers, these names arose from the shape of the wing when expanded, which then resembles the human ear; and ear-wig might easily be a corruption of ear-wing.
Swift, in the following lines, introduces an “Ear-wig (probably a Curculio) in a plum,” as though in allusion to some superstition: