Part 7

“A German, who had a country-seat about six miles from the fort, having given leave to some Hottentots to turn their cattle for awhile upon his land there, they removed to the place with their _kraal_. A son of this German, a brisk young fellow, was amusing himself in the kraal, when the deified insect appeared. The Hottentots, upon sight, ran tumultuously to adore it; while the young fellow tried to catch it, in order to see the effect such capture would produce among them. But how great was the general cry and agony when they saw it in his hands! They stared with distraction in their eyes at him, and at one another. ‘See, see, see,’ said they. ‘Ah! what is he going to do? Will he kill it? will he kill it?’ Every limb of them shaking through apprehensions for its fate. ‘Why,’ said the young fellow, who very well understood them, ‘do you make such a hideous noise? and why such agonies for this paltry animal?’ ‘Ah! sir,’ they replied, with the utmost concern, ‘’tis a divinity. ’Tis come from heaven; ’tis come on a good design. Ah! do not hurt it--do not offend it. We are the most miserable wretches upon earth if you do. This ground will be under a curse, and the crime will never be forgiven.’ This was not enough for the young German. He had a mind to carry the experiment a little farther. He seemed not, therefore, to be moved with their petitions and remonstrances; but made as if he intended to maim or destroy it. On this appearance of cruelty they started, and ran to and again like people frantic; asked him, where and what his conscience was? and how he durst think of perpetrating a crime, which would bring upon his head all the curses and thunders of heaven. But this not prevailing, they fell all prostrate on the ground before the young fellow, and with streaming eyes and the loudest cries, besought him to spare the creature and give it its liberty. The young German now yielded, and, having let the insect fly, the Hottentots jumped and capered and shouted in all the transports of joy; and, running after the animal, rendered it the customary divine honors. But the creature settled upon none of them, and there was not one sainted upon this occasion.”[260]

Afterward, Mr. Kolben, discoursing with these Hottentots, took occasion to ask them concerning the utmost limit they carried the belief of the sanctity and avenging spirit of this insect, when they declared to him, that if the German had killed it, all their cattle would certainly have been destroyed by wild beasts, and they themselves, every man, woman, and child of them, brought to a miserable end. That they believed the kraal to be of evil destiny where this insect is rarely seen. Mr. Kolben asserts that they would sooner give up their lives than renounce the slightest item of their belief.[261]

Dr. Sparrman, a Swedish traveler into the country of the Hottentots and Caffres between the years 1772 and 1779, in speaking of the Mantis, called in his time the “Hottentot’s God,” denies the above statement of Mr. Kolben, and says the Hottentots are so far from worshiping it, that they several times caught some of them, and gave them to him to put needles through them, by way of preserving them, in the same manner as he did with the other insects. But there is, he adds, a diminutive species of this insect, which some think would be a crime, as well as very dangerous, to do any harm to, but that it was only a superstitious notion, and not any kind of religious worship.[262]

Dr. Thunberg, who traveled in South Africa about the same time as Dr. Sparrman, corroborates the latter’s statement, and says he could see no reason for the supposition that the Hottentots worshiped the Mantis, but, he adds, it certainly was held in some degree of esteem, so that they would not willingly hurt, and deemed that person a creature fortunate on which it settled, though without paying it any sort of adoration.[263]

Dr. Vanderkemp, in his account of Caffraria, after describing the Mantis, says that the natives call it _oumtoanizoulou_, the _Child of Heaven_, and adds that “the Hottentots regard it as almost a deity, and offer their prayers to it, begging that it may not destroy them.”[264]

Mr. Kirchener, speaking of the same people, says they reverence a little insect, known by the name of the _Creeping Leaf_, a sight of which they conceive indicates something fortunate, and to kill it they suppose will bring a curse upon the perpetrator.[265]

Mr. Evan Evans, a missionary to the Cape of Good Hope, gives an account of a conversation which he had with the Hottentot driver of his wagon, which seems to make out the claims of the Mantis to be the God of the Hottentots--as it is even yet called. The driver directed his attention to “a small insect,” which he called by its above-mentioned familiar name, and alluded to the notions he had in former times connected with it. “I asked him, ‘Did you ever worship this insect then?’ He answered, ‘Oh, yes! a thousand times; always before I came to Bethelsdorf. Whenever I saw this little creature, I would fall down on my knees before him and pray.’ ‘What did you pray to him for?’ ‘I asked him to give me a good master, and plenty of thick milk and flesh.’ ‘Did you pray for nothing else?’ ‘No, sir; I did not then know that I wanted anything else.... Whenever I used to see this animal (holding the insect still in his hand) I used sometimes to fall down immediately before it; but if it was in the wagon-road, or in a foot-path, I used to push it up as gently as I could, to place it behind a bush, for fear a wagon should crush it, or some men or beasts would put it to death. If a Hottentot, by some accident, killed or injured this creature, he was sure to be unlucky all his lifetime, and could never shoot an elephant or a buffalo afterward.’”[266]

Niuhoff, in his account of his travels in Java in 1643, tells us “the Javanese set two of these little creatures (Mantes) a fighting together, and lay money on both sides, as we do at a cock-match.”[267] Among the Chinese also this quarrelsome property in the genus Mantis is turned into an entertainment. They are so fond of gaming and witnessing fights between animals that, as says Mr. Barrow in his Travels, “they have even extended their inquiries after fighting animals into the insect tribe, and have discovered a species of Gryllus or Locust that will attack each other with such ferocity as seldom to quit their hold without bringing away at the same time a limb of their antagonist. These little creatures are fed and kept apart in bamboo cages, and the custom of making them devour each other is so common that, during the summer months, scarcely a boy is to be seen without his cage of grasshoppers.”[268] The boys in Washington City, who call the Mantis the “Rear-horse,” are also fond of this amusement.

Among the legends of St. Francis Xavier, the following is found. Seeing a Mantis moving along in its solemn way, holding up its two fore-legs, as in the act of devotion, the Saint desired it to sing the praises of God, whereupon the insect caroled forth a fine canticle.[269]

The _Mantis religiosa_ of America is said to make a most interesting pet when tamed, which can be done in a very short time and with but little pains. Professor Glover, of the Maryland Agricultural College, tells me he once knew a lady in Washington who kept a Mantis on her window which soon grew so tame as to take readily a fly or other small insect out of her hand. But Mrs. Taylor, in her Orthopterian Defense, has given us the particulars in full of a Mantis which she had petted. She speaks of it under the name of “Queen Bess,” and in her most interesting style, as follows:

“Queen Bess, of famous memory, would alight on my shoulder and take all her food from me half a dozen times a day. When she omitted her visit I knew she had been hunting on her own account. All night long she would keep watch and guard under the mosquito-net. The silk (the thread with which the insect was bound) was fastened to the post of the bed; and woe betide an unfortunate mosquito who fancied for his supper a drop of claret. It was the drollest, the most laughter-moving sensation, to feel one of these trumpeters saluting your nose or forehead, and hear Queen Bess approaching with those long claws, creeping slowly, softly, nearer and nearer; to feel the fine prick of the lancet setting in for a tipple; then you would suppose a dozen fine needles had been suddenly drawn across the part; then, _presto!_ Bess’s strong, saber-like claws had the jolly trumpeter tucked into her capacious jaws before you could open your eyes to ascertain the state of affairs.

“These creatures very seldom fly far,” continues Mrs. Taylor, “but walk in a most stately and dignified manner. Queen Bess could not bear to be overlooked or slighted(!); and as sure as she saw me bending over the magnifier with an insect, and I thought she was ten yards off, the insect would be incontinently snapped out of my fingers. Many a valuable specimen disappeared in this way. I learned to put her at these times in the sounding-board of an Æolian harp, which was generally placed in the window. Her majesty liked music of this kind amazingly; as the vibration was _felt_ though not heard. I presume she fancied she was serenaded by the singing leaves of the forest. I knew she would have remained there spell-bound until driven forth by hunger, if I did not remove her when I was not afraid of her company.

“As I have begun my ‘experiences,’” continues the same writer, “I will go through with them and confess that I was obliged from circumstances to attach more than accident to her prophetic capacity--her fortune-telling. I have not a grain of superstition to contend against in other matters, having so much reverence for the Creator of all things that I certainly have no fear of anything earthly or spiritually conveyed to the senses. But I was taught by the saddest teacher, Experience, that whenever Queen Bess’s refusal went unheeded I was the sufferer. The first time I ever tried it was to determine a vacillating presentiment I felt about trying a new horse whose reputation was far from good. I placed Queen Bess before me, held up my finger:

“‘Attention! Queen Bess, would you advise me to try that horse?’

“She was standing on her hind legs, her antennæ erect, wings wide spread. I repeated the question. Antennæ fell; wings folded; and down she went, gradually, until her head and long thorax were buried beneath her front legs. I took her advice, and did not venture. Two days later the horse threw his rider and killed him.

“Here was the turning-point. Was I to allow such folly to master me? If French girls do take a Mantis at the junction of three roads, and ask her on which their lover will come, and watch the insect turning and examining each road with her weird sibyl head,[270]--if French girls commit such follies, should I, a staid American woman, follow their example--putting my faith in the caprices of an insect? Pshaw! I was above such folly. So the next time Queen Bess was consulted a more decided refusal was given; but I disregarded her warning, and most sorely did I repent it. Again she would approve, by standing more erect, if possible, spreading and closing her wings; then all was sunshine with me. So it went for many months. Many others have had the same experience, if they will confess it honestly. I learned to obey the hidden head more carefully than any other, I am sorry to say; and I never, in one single instance, knew her to refuse her opinion; and I never knew it to be wrong in whatever way she announced it.”

This same superstitious woman says that boys and girls try their future expectations by making a mimic chariot, ballasting it with small pebbles, shot, or any such like thing, and harnessing the Mantis in with silk. Upon being freighted she rises immediately, as if to try the weight; if too heavy she will not fly. Lighten the chariot, and she will soar away to a tree or a field; then her owner is to be a lucky boy. If she will not go at all, or only a short distance, and soon come down, misfortune is to be his doom.[271]

Other superstitions among us, with respect to the Mantis are as follows:

When the Mantis (Rear-horse) kneels, it sees an angel in the way, or hears the rustle of its wings. When it alights on your hand, you are about to make the acquaintance of a distinguished person; if it alights on your head, a great honor will shortly be conferred upon you. If it injures you in any way, which it does but seldom, you will lose a valued friend by calumny. Never kill a Mantis, as it bears charms against evil.

From the great resemblance of many species of Mantis to the leaves of the trees upon which they feed, some travelers, who have observed them, have declared that they saw the leaves of trees become living creatures, and take flight. Madame Merian informs us of a similar opinion among the Indians of Surinam, who believed these insects grew like leaves upon the trees, and when they were mature, loosened themselves and crawled, or flew away.

We find also in the works of Piso an account of insects becoming plants. Speaking of the Mantis, that author says: “Those little animals change into a green and tender plant, which is of two hands breadth. The feet are fixed into the ground first; from these, when necessary humidity is attracted, roots grow out, and strike into the ground; thus they change by degrees, and in a short time become a perfect plant. Sometimes only the lower part takes the nature and form of a plant, while the upper part remains as before, living and movable; after some time the animal is gradually converted into a plant. In this Nature seems to operate in a circle, by a continual retrograde motion.”[272]

There may be, however, much truth in this remarkable metamorphosis; for, that an insect may strike root into the earth, and, from the co-operation of heat and moisture, congenial to vegetation, produce a plant of the cryptogamic kind, cannot be disputed. Westwood states that he has seen a species of _Clavaria_, both of the undivided and branched kinds, which had sprung from insects, and were four times larger than the insects themselves. In truth, it cannot then be denied that Piso may not have seen a plant of a proportionate magnitude which had likewise grown out of a Mantis. The pupæ of bees, wasps, and cicadas, have been known to become the nidus of a plant, to throw up stems from the front part of the head, and change in every respect into a vegetable, and still retain the shell and exterior appearance of the parent insect at the root. Specimens of these vegetated animals are frequently brought from the West Indies. Mr. Drury had a beetle in the perfect state, from every part of which small stalks and fibers sprouted forth; they were entirely different from the tufts of hair that are observed in a few Coleopterous insects, such as the _Buprestis fascicularius_ of the Cape of Good Hope, and were certainly a vegetable production.[273] Mr. Atwood, in his account of Dominica, describes a “vegetable fly” as follows: “It is of the appearance and size of a small Cock-chafer, and buries itself in the ground, where it dies; and from its body springs up a small plant, resembling a young coffee tree, only that its leaves are smaller. The plant is often overlooked, from the supposition people have of its being no other than a coffee plant, but on examining it properly, the difference is easily distinguished.... The head, body, and feet of the insect appearing at the foot as perfect as when alive.”[274]

Dr. Colin, of Philadelphia, has mentioned, also, on the authority of a missionary, a “vegetable fly,” similar to the last mentioned, on the Ohio River.[275]

The inhabitants of the Sechell Islands raise the _Mantis siccifolia_, or Dry-leaf Mantis, as an object of commerce and natural history.

Achetidæ--Crickets.

In the Island of Barbados, the natives look upon the creaking chirp of a species of Cricket, to which Hughes has given the name of the _Ash-colored_ or _Sickly Cricket_, when heard in the house, as an omen of death to some one of the family.[277]

In England, also, is the Cricket’s chirp sometimes looked upon as prognosticating death. “When Blonzelind expired,” Gay, in his Pastoral Dirge, says,

And shrilling Crickets in the chimney cry’d.[278]

So also in Reed’s Old Plays is the Cricket’s cry ominous of death:

And the strange Cricket i’ th’ oven sings and hops.

The same superstition is found in the following line from the Œdipus of Dryden and Lee:

Owels, ravens, Crickets, seem the watch of death.

Gaule mentions, among other vain observations and superstitious ominations thereupon, “the Cricket’s chirping behind the chimney stack, or creeping on the foot-pace.”[279]

Dr. Nathaniel Horne, after saying that “by the flying and crying of ravens over their houses, especially in the dusk of evening, and when one is sick, they conclude death,” adds, “the same they conclude of a Cricket crying in a house where there was wont to be none.”[280]

“Some sort of people,” says Mr. Ramsay, in his Elminthologia, “at every turn, upon every accident, how are they therewith terrified! If but a Cricket unusually appear, or they hear but the clicking of a Death-watch, as they call it, they, or some one else in the family, shall die!”[281]

Gilbert White, the accurate naturalist of Selborne, speaking of Crickets, says: “They are the house-wife’s barometer, foretelling her when it will rain; and are prognostics sometimes, she thinks, of ill or good luck, of the death of a near relation, or the approach of an absent lover. By being the constant companions of her solitary hours, they naturally become the objects of her superstition.”[282]

The voice of the Cricket, says the Spectator, has struck more terror than the roaring of a lion.

Mrs. Bray also notices that the Cricket’s chirp in England, which in almost all other countries, and in that too in some families, as will be shown hereafter, is considered a cheerful and a welcome note, the harbinger of joy,--is deemed by the peasantry ominous of sorrow and evil.[283]

“In Dumfries-shire,” says Sir William Jardine, “it is a common superstition that if Crickets forsake a house which they have long inhabited, some evil will befall the family; generally the death of some member is portended. In like manner the presence or return of this cheerful little insect is lucky, and portends some good to the family.”[284]

Melton also says,--“17. That it is a sign of death to some in that house where Crickets have been many years, if on a sudden they forsake the chimney.”[285]

The departure of Crickets from a hearth where they have been heard, is, at the present time, in England, considered an omen of misfortune.[286]

From the above statements of Mr. White, Mrs. Bray, and Sir William Jardine, we learn that in England the Cricket’s chirp is not always ominous of evil, but sometimes also of good luck, of joy, and of the approach of an absent lover.

A correspondent of the “Notes and Queries” mentions the Cricket’s cry as foreboding good luck.[287] So also a writer for “The Mirror,” remarking, it is singular that the House-cricket should by some persons be considered an unlucky, by others a lucky, inmate of the mansion. Those who hold the latter opinion, he adds, consider the destruction of these insects the means of bringing misfortunes on their habitations.[288] Grose thus expresses this last superstition: Persons killing these insects (including the Lady-bird, before mentioned) will infallibly, within the course of the year, break a bone, or meet with some other dreadful misfortune.[289]

That the belief that the appearance of Crickets in a house is a good omen, and prognosticates cheerfulness and plenty, is pretty generally entertained in England, may be inferred also from the manner in which it has been embodied by Cowper, in his address to a Cricket

Chirping on his kitchen hearth.

His words are:

Whereso’er be thine abode, Always harbinger of good.

And again in that admirable little tale of Charles Dickens, entitled “The Cricket on the Hearth,” this good and happy superstition is embodied. “It’s sure to bring us good fortune, John! It always has been so. To have a Cricket on the hearth is the luckiest thing in the world,” says its heroine.

All these superstitions are more or less entertained in America, brought here by the English themselves, and retained by their descendants. That the Cricket is the “harbinger of good,” it gives me pleasure to say, is the most common.

Another superstition obtaining in this country, and particularly in Maryland and Virginia, is that Crickets are old folks and ought not therefore to be destroyed. This probably arose from Crickets being found about the kitchen hearth where the old folks were accustomed to sit.

Milton chose for his contemplative pleasures a spot where Crickets resorted:

Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, Far from all resort of mirth, Save the Cricket on the hearth.[290]

The learned Scaliger is said to have been particularly delighted with the chirping of these animals, and was accustomed to keep them in a box for his amusement in his study.[291]

Mrs. Taylor, the writer of a very interesting series of papers on insects for Harper’s Magazine, relates that in her travels through Wales, she obtained several House-crickets in the old Castle of Caernarvon. These she carried with her, in her journeyings to and fro over the Kingdom, for several years, and at last brought them to this country, where they were liberated in the snuggest corner of a Southern hearth. Again a wanderer for many years, she went back to the old house to see how her chirping friends were coming on, but, alas! she was told by the then residents, with the utmost calmness, “they had had great difficulty in _scalding_ them out, and they hoped there was not one left on the premises!”[292]

In certain countries of Africa, Crickets are reported to constitute an article of commerce. Some persons rear them, feed them in a kind of iron oven, and sell them to the natives, who are very fond of their music, thinking it induces sleep.[293] De Pauw finds some traces of the Egyptian worship of the Scarabæus in this fondness for the music of the “holy Crickets,” as he calls them, of Madagascar! By the rearing of which insects, he tells us, the Africans make a living, and the rich would think themselves at enmity with heaven, if they did not preserve whole swarms in ovens constructed expressly for that purpose.[294]

The youth of Germany, Jaeger says, are extremely fond of Field-crickets, so much so, that there is scarcely a boy to be seen who has not several small boxes made expressly for keeping these insects in. So much delighted are they, too, with their music, that they carry these boxes of Crickets into their bed-rooms at night, and are soothed to sleep with their chirping lullaby.[295]

On the contrary, others, as has been before mentioned, think there is something ominous and melancholy in the Cricket’s cry, and use every endeavor to banish this insect from their houses. “Lidelius tells us,” says Goldsmith, “of a woman who was very much incommoded by Crickets, and tried, but in vain, every method of banishing them from her house. She at last accidentally succeeded; for having one day invited several guests to her house, where there was a wedding, in order to increase the festivity of the entertainment, she procured drums and trumpets to entertain them. The noise of these was so much greater than what the little animals were accustomed to, that they instantly forsook their situation, and were never heard in that mansion more.”[296] Like many other noisy persons, Crickets like to hear nobody louder than themselves.