Navarette tells us he once caught (in China?) a small insect that was injurious to poultry--“a very deformed insect, and of a strange shape”--when, as soon as it was known, several women ran to him to beg its _tail_. He gave it to them, and they told him it was of excellent use when dried, and made into powder, “being a prodigious help to women in labor, to forward their delivery, if they drank it in a little wine.”[1256] The Irish have a large beetle of which strange tales are believed; they term it the Coffin-cutter, and deem it in some way connected with the grave and purgatory.[1257] Turpin, in his History of Siam, says: “There is a very singular animal in Siam ... bred in the dung of elephants. It is entirely black, its wings are strong, and its head extremely curious: it is furnished on the top with several points, in the form of a trunk, and a small horn in the middle: it has four large feet, which raise it more than an inch from the ground: its back seems to be one very hard entire shell. It flies to the very top of the cocoa-trees, of which it eats the heart, and often kills them, if a remedy is not applied. Children play with them, and make them fight.”[1258] General Count Déjeau, Aid-de-camp to Napoleon Bonaparte, was so anxious, says Jaeger, in his Life of North American Insects, to increase the number of specimens in his entomological cabinet, that he even availed himself of his military campaigns for this purpose, and was continually occupied in collecting insects and fastening them with pins on the outside of his hat, which was always covered with them. The Emperor, as well as the whole army, were accustomed to see General Déjeau’s head thus singularly ornamented, even when in battle. But the departed spirits of those murdered insects once had their revenge on him; for, in the battle of Wagram, in 1809, and while he was at the side of Napoleon, a shot from the enemy struck Déjeau’s head, and precipitated him senseless from his horse. Soon, however, recovering from the shock, and being asked by the Emperor if he was still alive, he answered, “I am not dead; but, alas! my insects are all gone!” for his hat was literally torn to pieces.[1259] Professor Jaeger tells also the following anecdote of another passionate naturalist: The celebrated Prince Paul of Würtemberg, whom Mr. Jaeger met in 1829 at Port-au-Prince, being one day at the latter’s house, shed tears of envy when he showed him the gigantic beetle Actæon, which, only a short time before, had been presented to him by the Haytien Admiral Banajotti, he having found it at the foot of a cocoa-nut tree on his plantation.[1260]