players have had, and in some cases may still have, the power

to create.

At the open window of her solitary kitchen, half lighted by half by a flaring candle, sits All-work

this October moon,

Deborah at her tea.

Why, suddenly arrested in its prophetic orbit, does the tea-cup, in the very turn of fortune, drop, shivered, from her shaking hand? Why does her tallowy dip, dip at once into darkness? What is the wailing cry that salutes her startled ear? Is it the voice of a screech-owl from the barn, or the squeal of a mouse from the cupboard? No! It is the shriek of some gloomy night-flier, which, entering at the casement, has put out the candle, and deposits its dusky form upon the snow-white dresser. Deborah can only dimly discern it by help of the moon. "Oh, for a light! My sweetheart for a light!" she inwardly ejaculates; but the evening is warm, the grate is cold, and the damsel dares not stir.

At length, however, in some way or another-whether by aid of embers or of lucifer, not Deborah herself could ever tellthe candle is relit; she could only testify that its flame burnt blue. With trembling hand she places it on the dresser, to "show up" the characters of her alarming visitant, who ever and anon continues to salute her with its mournful wail..

Deborah is a country girl, and has therefore learnt, of course, to distinguish betwixt a butterfly and a black beetle; and she thought, till this awful moment, that she knew, quite as well, the difference between a brown moth and a spirit, black,

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white, or grey. That the thing upon her dresser is a moth, of size prodigious, the candle seems to tell her; but there, as it lies, vibrating its dingy pinions in unison with its dismal cry, somewhat else seems to tell her that it is no moth at all, or a moth of most strange unnatural behaviour, not at all to her liking. Whether to rid herself by fair means, or by foul, of her unwelcome quest, "that is the question." By alarming, to drive away, she might bring the creature in her very face, or on her very back; better at once to "end it." So Deborah screws up her courage,-seizes on a knife,—approaches with a murderer's step her now quiescent victim, and with a dexterity, under existing circumstances, perfectly miraculous, severs its head from its body. Then, as though a coffin had popped from out the grate, bounds the plump person of Deborah from the dresser with a piercing scream. Most marvellous !-most horrible!-She hears again, louder and more doleful than before, that melancholy cry, and it is the moth's bodiless head, or headless body, from whence it issues. Snap!-like her jack-chain in the morning, had gone the spring of Deborah's wound-up courage; but now desperation solders it together, and, after a stop, her bodily machine is once more in motion towards the dresser. She lifts the candle-holds it nearer to the object, the now twofold object of her terror-she looks—she listens—perhaps her ears, or eyes, or hand, had played her false;—but, no! they and her murderous weapon had all been true:-here lies the

head, there the body,-and, sure enough, too, the head still wails as if in suffering, and the body heaves, and the dark wings quiver, as if in indignation. But it is not alone these quivering pinions which impart a motion like their own to Deborah's whitened lip. It is not even the wail of that dissevered head which causes her heart to beat like a muffled drum, in accompaniment of its plaintive pipe; but she sees— she sees, plain as the effigy on Master Thomson's new tombstone-right on the creature's back, between its shoulders, another head-an eyeless skull-magnified, by terror and consciousness of cruelty, into size above the human. Poor Deborah beholds no more-she has seen and heard too much, and falls, plump as her person, on the kitchen floor. There her mistress, after having by reiterated peals broken the parlour bell, was the first to find her. In due time, this veracious tale of wonder was gathered from the domestic's lips; and in the mutilated object of her alarm, was discovered the decapitated corpse-of a Death's-head Moth.

Next, in the power of raising superstitious terror, and, as more common than the last, an agent of creating it more extensively, comes the "Death-watch," that pocket time-piece of the grisly monarch, heard, not seen, whose measured tick— tick-gives warning of its master's soundless footsteps. What hollow echoes are awakened by this monotonous midnight music! Screwing down of coffins-rattle of earth above them -toll of the funeral bell-salute the trembling ear; while

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correspondent phantoms-sheeted corpse and shrouded skeleton-start into lifeless motion before the glaring eye. Such, as seen and heard through the magnifying haze of ignorance and twilight, or heard only in the dead stillness of the midnight hour, are the death's-head moth and the death-watch beetle.

Let us now inspect them in a calmer and clearer manner. First, for the Death's head-the Sphinx or Acherontia Atropos of the entomologist. And here, in the largest of British moths, we have a beautiful insect of richly variegated plumage, -bird-like in magnitude-the "wandering bird" of Poland.

In the upper wings, which, when expanded, cover an extent of nearly five inches, the prevailing hues are very dark, but elegantly disposed in waves and shades of brown and black, broken by a few lighter clouds, and one small white spot near the centre. The secondary pinions, of less sombre colouring, are of a deep ochreous yellow, barred with black; a livery in which the massive body is also attired. The head and thorax are dark, and it is on the back of the latter that the insect bears its dreaded badge, the death's head, to which it owes its name, figured in yellowish grey upon a sable ground.*

The power possessed by the death's-head of emitting sound (a gift rarely, if at all in any other instance, bestowed upon its race) gives to this singular moth another fancifully imputed attribute of the supernatural; and the character of its voice, if voice it may be called,-loud, shrill, and wailing, -invests

*See Frontispiece to Vol. II.

132

CRY OF THE DEATH'S-HEAD.

it with an accordant tone of evil augury. However fanciful its prophecy of ill to others, the lament of this unusually complaining creature would seem to be a real expression of being ill at ease itself, since, according to Réaumur, when "shut up in a box, it cries; when caught, it cries; and when held between the fingers, it never ceases crying."

Naturalists have been sorely puzzled and widely at variance as to the organs producing this frequently-employed voice. One supposes it to proceed from the body; another thinks it is produced by friction of the chest upon the abdomen, the wings having nothing to do therewith; a third, tout au contraire, supposes he has discovered the organs of sound in a pair of scales at the wing's base, played upon by the action of the pinions themselves.* Réaumur opined that the cry proceeded from the insect's head, its immediate source being the friction of the palpi against the tongue. Passerini, Dumeril, and Duponchel have traced the origin of the sound to the interior of the insect's head; from which, according to the statement of the latter, the sound continues to proceed on separation of the body.

Yet later than all the above varied opinions, and only accordant with one, comes that of Mr. Denny, according to which, the true organs, producing the death's-head's melancholy strain, are two large moveable horny scales, at the bases of the upper wings, fixed on the thorax, and covering each a

*M. De Johet.