Curious Facts in the History of Insects; Including Spiders and Scorpions.: A Complete Collection of the Legends, Superstitions, Beliefs, and Ominous Signs Connected with Insects; Together with Their Uses in Medicine, Art, and as Food; and a Summary of Their Remarkable Injuries and Appearances.Cowan, Frank
History
Curious Facts in the History of Insects; Including Spiders and Scorpions.: A Complete Collection of the Legends, Superstitions, Beliefs, and Ominous Signs Connected with Insects; Together with Their Uses in Medicine, Art, and as Food; and a Summary of Their Remarkable Injuries and Appearances.
Cowan, Frank
Insects
In the Account of the admirable Voyage of Domingo Gonsales, the little
Spaniard, to the World of the Moon, by Help of several Gansa’s, or large
Geese, we find the following: “One accident more befel me worth mention,
that during my stay, I say, I saw a kind of a reddish cloud coming
toward me, and continually approaching nearer, which, at last, I
perceived, was nothing but a huge swarm of Locusts. He that reads the
discources of learned men concerning them (as John Leo, of Africa, and
others, who relate that they are seen for several days in the air before
they fall on the earth), and adds thereto this experience of mine, will
easily conclude that they can come from no other place than the globe of
the moon.”[386]
To accompany this piece of satire, the following suits well:
A Chinese author, quoted by Rev. Thomas Smith, observes, that Locusts
never appear in China but when great floods are followed by a very dry
season; and that it is his opinion that they are hatched by the sun from
the spawn of fish left by the waters on the ground![387]
So far the history of the Locust has been but a series of the greatest
calamities which human nature has suffered--famine, pestilence, and
death. No wonder that, in all ages and times, these insects have so
deeply impressed the imagination, that almost all people have looked on
them with superstitious horror. We have shown how that their
devastations have entered into the history of nations. Their effigies,
too, like those of other conquerors of the earth, have been perpetuated
in coins.
We are the army of the great God, and we lay ninety-and-nine eggs; were
the hundredth put forth, the world would be ours--such is the speech the
Arabs put into the mouth of the Locust. And such is the feeling the
Arabs entertain of this insect, that they give it a remarkable pedigree,
and the following description of its person: It has the head of the
horse, the horns of the stag, the eye of the elephant, the neck of the
ox, the breast of the lion, the body of the scorpion, the hip of the
camel, the legs of the stork, the wings of the eagle, and the tail of
the dragon.[388]
The Mohammedans say, that after God had created man from clay, of that
which was left he made the Locust: and in utter despair, they look upon
this devastating scourge as a just chastisement from heaven for their or
their nation’s sins, or as directed by that fatality in which they all
believe.[389]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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