Authors are of opinion that the ancients possessed some secret for preserving garments from the Moth, _Tinia tapetzella_. We are told the robes of Servius Tullius were found in perfect preservation at the death of Sejanus, an interval of more than five hundred years. Pliny gives as a precaution “to lay garments on a coffin;” others recommend “cantharides hung up in a house, or wrapping them in a lion’s skin”--“the poor little insects,” says Reaumur, “being probably placed in bodily fear of this terrible animal.”[861] 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, Summer weaves thy verdant crown. Sipping o’er the pearly lawn, The fragrant nectar of the dawn, Little tales thou lov’st to sing, Tales of mirth--an insect king. Thine the treasures of the field, All thy own the seasons yield; Nature paints thee for the year, Songster to the shepherds dear; Innocent, of placid fame, What of man can boast the same? Thine the loudest voice of praise, Harbinger of fruitful days; Darling of the tuneful nine, Phœbus is thy sire divine; Phœbus to thy note has given Music from the spheres of heaven; Happy most as first of earth, All thy hours are peace and mirth; Cares nor pains to thee belong, Thou alone art ever young. Thine the pure immortal vein, Blood nor flesh thy life sustain; Rich in spirits--health thy feast, Thou art a demi-god at least.