Curious Facts in the History of Insects; Including Spiders and Scorpions Part 32

Bell says the Persians "have such a dread of these creatures, that, when provoked by any person, they wish a Kashan Scorpion may sting him."[1112]

An old story is, that a Scorpion surrounded with live coals, finding no method of escaping, grows desperate from its situation, and stings itself to death. This, though considered a mere fable of antiquity, may still have some truth, if we believe the following from the pen of Ulloa: "We more than once," says this traveler, "entertained ourselves with an experiment of putting a Scorpion into a gla.s.s vessel, and injecting a little smoke of tobacco, and immediately by stopping it found that its aversion to this smell is such, that it falls into the most furious agitations, till, giving itself several stings on the head, it finds relief by destroying itself."[1113] There is also told a story in the East Indies, that "the Scorpion is sometimes so pestered with the pismires, that he stings himself to death in the head with his tail, and so becomes a prey to the pismires."[1114]

The Scorpion was an emblem of the Egyptian G.o.ddess Selk; and she is usually found represented with this animal bound upon her head.[1115]

aelian mentions Scorpions of Coptos, which, though inflicting a deadly sting, and dreaded by the people, so far respected the Egyptian G.o.ddess Isis, who was particularly wors.h.i.+ped in that city, that women, in going to express their grief before her, walked with bare feet, or lay upon the ground, without receiving any injury from them.[1116]

The Ethiopians that dwell near the River Hydaspis commonly eat Scorpions and serpents without the slightest harm, "which certainly proceeds from no other thing than a secret and wonderful const.i.tution of the body!"

says Mercurialis.[1117]

Lutfullah, the learned Mohammedan gentleman, in his Autobiography, relates the following:

"On the morning of the 11th (April, 1839), I ordered my servant boy to shake my bedding and put it in the sun for an hour or so, that the moisture imbibed by the quilt might be dried. As soon as the quilt was removed from its place, what did I behold but an immense Scorpion, tapering towards its tail of nine vertebrae, armed with a sting at the end, crawling with impunity at the edge of the carpet. I had never seen such a large monster before. It was black in the body, with small bristles all over, dark green in the tail, and red at the sting. This hideous sight rendered me and the servant horror-struck. In the mean time, an Afghan friend of mine, by name Ata Mohamed Khan Kakar, a respectable resident of the town, honoured me with a visit, and, seeing the reptile, observed, 'Lutfullah, you are a lucky man, having made a narrow escape this morning. This cursed worm is called Jerrara, and its fatal sting puts a period to animal life in a moment; return, therefore, your thanks to the Lord, all merciful, who gave you a new life in having saved you from the mortal sting of this evil bed-companion of yours.' 'I have no fear of the worm,' replied I, 'for it dare not sting me unless it is written in the book of fate to be stung by it.' Saying this, I made the animal crawl into a small earthen vessel, and stopped the mouth of it with clay; and then making a large fire, I put the vessel therein for an hour or so, to turn the reptile into ashes, which, administered in doses of half a grain to adults, are a specific remedy for violent colicky pains."[1118]

The ashes of burnt Scorpions, besides being good for colicky pains, as Lutfullah says, were often prescribed by the ancient physicians for stone in the bladder;[1119] and Topsel, quoting Kiranides, has the following: "If a man take a vulgar Scorpion and drown the same in a porringer of oyl in the wane of the moon, and therewithall afterward anoynt the back from the shoulders to the hips, and also the head and forehead, with the tips of the fingers and toes of one that is a demoniack or a lunatick person, it is reported, that he shall ease and cure him in short time. And the like is reported of the Scorpion's sting joyned with the top of basil wherein is seed, and with the heart of a swallow, all included in a piece of harts skin."[1120] The oil of Scorpions, Bra.s.savolus says, "drives out worms miraculously;" and oil of Scorpions' and vipers' "tongues is a most excellent remedy against the plague, as Crinitus testifies, i. 7."[1121] Galen prescribes Scorpions for jaundice, and Kiranides the same for the several kinds of ague.

"Plinius Secundus saith, that a quartan ague, as the magicians report, will be cured in three daies by a Scorpion's four last joynts of his tail, together with the gristle of his ear, so wrapped up in a black cloth, that the sick patient may neither perceive the Scorpion that is applied, nor him that bound it on.... Samonicus commends Scorpions against pains in the eyes, in these verses:

If that some grievous pain perplex thy sight, Wool wet in oyl is good bound on all night.

Carry about thee a live Scorpion's eye, Ashes of coleworts if thou do apply, With bruised frankincense, goat's milk, and wine, One night will prove this remedy divine."[1122]

The following Asiatic fable of the Scorpion and the Tortoise is from the Beharistan of Jamy: A Scorpion, armed with pernicious sting and filthy poison, undertook a journey. Coming to the bank of a wide river, he stopped in great perplexity, wanting height of leg to cross over, yet very unwilling to return. A Tortoise, seeing his situation, and moved with compa.s.sion, took him on his back, sprang into the river, and was swimming toward the opposite sh.o.r.e, when he heard a noise on his sh.e.l.l as of something striking him; he called out to know what it was; the ungrateful Scorpion answered, "It is the motion of my sting only, I know it cannot affect you, but it is a habit which I cannot relinquish."

"Indeed," replied the Tortoise, "then I cannot do better than free so evil-minded a creature from his bad disposition, and secure the good from his malevolence." Saying which he dived under the water, and the waves soon carried the Scorpion beyond the bourn of existence.

When, in this banquet house of vice and strife, A knave oft strikes the various stings of fraud, 'Tis best the sea of death ingulf him soon, That he be freed from man, and man from him.[1123]

Topsel, in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, has the following in his chapter on the Scorpion:

"There is a common adage, _Cornix Scorpium_, a Raven to a Scorpion, and it is used against them that perish by their own inventions: when they set upon others, they meet with their matches, as a raven did when it preyed upon a Scorpion, thus described by Alciatus, under his t.i.tle _Justa ultio_, just revenge, saying as followeth:

Raptabat volucer captum pede corvus in auras Scorpion, audaci praemia parta gulae.

Ast ille infuso sensim per membra venemo, Raptorem in stygias compulit ultor aquas.

O risu res digna! aliis qui fata parabat, Ipse periit, propriis succubuitque dolis.

Which may be Englished thus:

The ravening crow for prey a Scorpion took Within her foot, and therewithal aloft did flie, But he empoysoned her by force and stinging stroke, So ravener in the Stygian Lake did die.

O sportfull game! that he which other for bellyes sake did kill, By his own deceit should fall into death's will.

"There be some learned writers, who have compared a Scorpion to an epigram, or rather an epigram to a Scorpion, because as the sting of the Scorpion lyeth in the tayl, so the force and vertue of an epigram is in the conclusion, for _vel acriter salse mordeat, vel jucunde atque dulciter delectet_, that is, either let it bite sharply at the end, or else delight pleasingly."[1124]

Araneidae--True Spiders.

A little head and body small, With slender feet and very tall, Belly great, and from thence come all The webs it spins.--MOUFET.[1125]

"Domitian sometime," says Hollingshed incidentally in his Chronicles of England, "and an other prince yet living, delited so much to see the iollie combats betwixt a stout Flie and an old Spider.... Some parasites also in the time of the aforesaid emperour (when they were disposed to laugh at his follie, and yet would seem in appearance to gratifie his fantasticall head with some shew of dutiful demenour) could devise to set their lorde on worke, by letting a fresh flie privilie into his chamber, which he foorthwith would egerlie have hunted (all other businesse set apart) and never ceased till he had caught him in his fingers: whereupon arose the proverbe 'ne musca quidem,' altered first by Vitius Priscus, who being asked whether anie bodie was with Domitian, answered 'ne musca quidem,' whereby he noted his follie. There are some c.o.c.kes combs here and there in England, learning it abroad as men transregionate, which make account also of this pastime, as of a notable matter, telling what a fight is seene betweene them, if either of them be l.u.s.tie and couragious in his kind. One also hath mad a booke of the Spider and the Flie, wherein he dealeth so profoundlie, and beyond all measure of skill, that neither he himself that made it, neither anie one that readeth it can reach unto the meaning thereof."[1126]

Chapelain, the author of Pucelle, was called by the academicians the Knight of the Order of the Spider, because he was so avaricious, that though he had an income of 13,000 livres, and more than 240,000 in ready money, he wore an old coat so patched, pieced, and threadbare, that the st.i.tches exhibited no bad resemblance to the fibers produced by that insect. Being one day present at a large party given by the great Conde, a Spider of uncommon size fell from the ceiling upon the floor. The company thought it could not have come from the roof, and all the ladies at once agreed that it must have proceeded from Chapelain's wig;--the wig so celebrated by the well-known parody.[1127]

The often-told anecdote of the Scottish monarch, Robert Bruce, and the cottage Spider, is thus related in Chambers' Miscellany: While wandering on the wild hills of Carrick, in order to escape the emissaries of Edward, Robert the Bruce on one occasion pa.s.sed the night under the shelter of a poor deserted cottage. Throwing himself down on a heap of straw, he lay upon his back, with his hands placed under his head, unable to sleep, but gazing vacantly upward at the rafters of the hut, disfigured with cobwebs. From thoughts long and dreary about the hopelessness of the enterprise in which he was engaged, and the misfortunes he had already encountered, he was roused to take interest in the efforts of a poor industrious Spider, which had begun to ply its vocation with the first gray light of morning. The object of the animal was to swing itself, by its thread, from one rafter to another; but in the attempt it repeatedly failed, each time vibrating back to the point whence it had made the effort. Twelve times did the little creature try to reach the desired spot, and as many times was it unsuccessful. Not disheartened with its failure, it made the attempt once more, and, lo!

the rafter was gained. "The thirteenth time," said Bruce, springing to his feet; "I accept it as a lesson not to despond under difficulties, and shall once more venture my life in the struggle for the independence of my beloved country." The result is well known.[1128]

It is related in the life of Mohammed, that when he and Abubeker were fleeing for their lives before the Coreis.h.i.+tes, they hid themselves for three days in a cave, over the mouth of which a Spider spread its web, and a pigeon laid two eggs there, the sight of which made the pursuers not go in to search for them.[1129]

A similar story is told in the Lives of the Saints, of St. Felix of Nola: "But the Saint," says Butler, "in the mean time had slept a little out of the way, and crept through a hole in a ruinous old wall, which was instantly closed up by Spiders' webs. His enemies, never imagining anything could have lately pa.s.sed where they saw so close a Spider's web, after a fruitless search elsewhere, returned in the evening without their prey. Felix finding among the ruins, between two houses, an old well half dry, hid himself in it for six months; and received during that time wherewithal to subsist by means of a devout Christian woman."[1130]

It is said of Heliogabalus, that, for the purpose of estimating the magnitude of the City of Rome, he commanded a collection of Spiders to be made.[1131]

Ill.u.s.trative of the singularly pleasurable effect of music upon Spiders, in the Historie de la Musique, et de ses Effets, we find the following relation:

"Monsieur de ----, captain of the Regiment of Navarre, was confined six months in prison for having spoken too freely of M. de Louvois, when he begged leave of the governor to grant him permission to send for his lute to soften his confinement. He was greatly astonished after four days to see at the time of his playing the mice come out of their holes, and the Spiders descend from their webs, who came and formed in a circle round him to hear him with attention. This at first so much surprised him, that he stood still without motion, when having ceased to play, all those Spiders retired quietly into their lodgings; such an a.s.sembly made the officer fall into reflections upon what the ancients had told of Orpheus, Arion, and Amphion. He a.s.sured me he remained six days without again playing, having with difficulty recovered from his astonishment, not to mention a natural aversion he had for this sort of insects, nevertheless he began afresh to give a concert to these animals, who seemed to come every day in greater numbers, as if they had invited others, so that in process of time he found a hundred of them about him.

In order to rid himself of them he desired one of the jailors to give him a cat, which he sometimes shut up in a cage when he wished to have this company and let her loose when he had a mind to dismiss them, making it thus a kind of comedy that alleviated his imprisonment. I long doubted the truth of this story, but it was confirmed to me six months ago by M. P----, intendant of the duchy of V----, a man of merit and probity, who played upon several instruments to the utmost excellence.

He told me that being at ----, he went into his chamber to refresh himself after a walk, and took up a violin to amuse himself till supper time, setting a light upon the table before him; he had not played a quarter of an hour before he saw several spiders descend from the ceiling, who came and ranged themselves round about the table to hear him play, at which he was greatly surprised, but this did not interrupt him, being willing to see the end of so singular an occurrence. They remained on the table very attentively till somebody came to tell him that supper was ready, when having ceased to play, he told me these insects remounted to their webs, to which he would suffer no injury to be done. It was a diversion with which he often entertained himself out of curiosity."[1132]

The Abbe Olivet has described an amus.e.m.e.nt of Pelisson during his confinement in the Bastile for refusing to betray to the government certain secrets intrusted to him by a friend who was a leading politician at the court of Louis XIV., which consisted in feeding a Spider, which he discovered forming its web across the only air-hole of his cell. For some time he placed his flies at the edge of the window, while a stupid Basque, his sole companion, played on a bagpipe. Little by little the Spider used itself to distinguish the sound of the instrument, and issued from its hole to run and catch its prey. Thus calling it always by the same sound, and placing the flies at a still greater distance, he succeeded, after several months, to drill the Spider by regular exercise, so that at length it never failed appearing at the first sound to seize on the fly provided for it, at the extremity of the cell, and even on the knees of the prisoner.[1133]

At a ladies' school at Kensington, England, an immense species of Spider is said to be uncomfortably common; and that when the young ladies sing their accustomed hymn or psalm before morning and evening prayers, these Spiders make their appearance on the floor, or suspended overhead from their webs in the ceiling, obviously attracted by the "concord of sweet sounds."[1134]

The following lines "to a Spider which inhabited a cell," are from the Anthologia Borealis et Australis:

In this wild, groping, dark, and drearie cove, Of wife, of children, and of health bereft, I hailed thee, friendly Spider, who hadst wove Thy mazy net on yonder mouldering raft: Would that the cleanlie housemaid's foot had left Thee tarrying here, nor took thy life away; For thou, from out this seare old ceiling's cleft, Came down each morn to hede my plaintive lay; Joying like me to heare sweete musick play, Wherewith I'd fein beguile the dull, dark, lingering day.[1135]

"When the great and brilliant Lauzun was held in captivity, his only joy and comfort was a friendly Spider: she came at his call; she took her food from his finger, and well understood his word of command. In vain did jailors and soldiers try to deceive his tiny companion; she would not obey their voices, and refused the tempting bait from their hand.

Here, then, was not only an ear, but a keen power of distinction. The despised little animal listened with sweet affection, and knew how to discriminate between not unsimilar tones."[1136]

Quatremer Disjonval, a Frenchman by birth, was an adjutant-general in Holland, and took an active part on the side of the Dutch patriots when they revolted against the Stadtholder. On the arrival of the Prussian army under the Duke of Brunswick, he was immediately taken, tried, and, having been condemned to twenty-five years' imprisonment, was incarcerated in a dungeon at Utrecht, where he remained eight years.

During this long confinement, by many curious observations upon his sole companions, Spiders, he discovered that they were in the highest degree sensitive of approaching changes in the atmosphere, and that their retirement and reappearance, their weaving and general habits, were intimately connected with the changes of the weather. In the reading of these living barometers he became wonderfully accurate, so much so, that he could prognosticate the approach of severe weather from ten to fourteen days before it set in, which is proven by the following remarkable fact, which led to his release: "When the troops of the French republic overran Holland in the winter of 1794, and kept pus.h.i.+ng forward over the ice, a sudden and unexpected thaw, in the early part of December, threatened the destruction of the whole army unless it was instantly withdrawn. The French generals were thinking seriously of accepting a sum offered by the Dutch, and withdrawing their troops, when Disjonval, who hoped that the success of the republican army might lead to his release, used every exertion, and at length succeeded in getting a letter conveyed to the French general in 1795, in which he pledged himself, from the peculiar actions of the Spiders, of whose movements he was enabled to judge with perfect accuracy, that within fourteen days there would commence a most severe frost, which would make the French masters of all the rivers, and afford them sufficient time to complete and make sure of the conquest they had commenced, before it should be followed by a thaw. The commander of the French forces believed his prognostication, and persevered. The cold weather, which Disjonval had predicted, made its appearance in twelve days, and with such intensity, that the ice over the rivers and ca.n.a.ls became capable of bearing the heaviest artillery. On the 28th of January, 1795, the French army entered Utrecht in triumph; and Quatremer Disjonval, who had watched the habits of his Spiders with so much intelligence and success, was, as a reward for his ingenuity, released from prison."[1137]

In Bartholomaeus, De Proprietatibus Rerum (printed by Th. Berthelet, 27th Henry VIII.), lib. xviii. fol. 314, speaking of Pliny, we read: "Also he saythe, spynners (Spiders) ben tokens of divynation and of knowing what wether shal fal, for oft by weders that shal fal, some spin and weve higher or lower. Also he saythe, that multytude of spynners is token of moche reyne."[1138]

Willsford, in his Nature's Secrets, p. 131, tells us: "Spiders creep out of their holes and narrow receptacles against wind or rain; Minerva having made them sensible of an approaching storm."[1139]

Hone, in his Every Day Book, also mentions that from Spiders prognostications as to the weather may be drawn; and gives the following instructions to read this animal-barometer: "If the weather is likely to become rainy, windy, or in other respects disagreeable, they fix the terminating filaments, on which the whole web is suspended, unusually short; and in this state they await the influence of a temperature which is remarkably variable. On the contrary, if the terminating filaments are uncommonly long, we may, in proportion to their length, conclude that the weather will be serene, and continue so at least for ten or twelve days. But if the Spiders be totally indolent, rain generally succeeds; though, on the other hand, their activity during rain is the most certain proof that it will be only of short duration, and followed with fair and constant weather. According to further observations, the Spiders regularly make some alterations in their webs or nets every twenty-four hours; if these changes take place between the hours of six and seven in the evening, they indicate a clear and pleasant night."[1140]

Pausanias tells us that after the slaughter at Chaeronea, the Thebans were obliged to place a guard within the walls of their city; but which, however, after the death of Philip, and during the reign of Alexander, they drove out. For this action, this historian continues, it was that Divinity gave them tokens in the webs of Spiders of the destruction that awaited them. For, during the battle at Leuctra, the Spiders in the temple of Ceres Thesmophoros wove white webs about the doors; but when Alexander and the Macedonians attacked their dominions, their webs were found to be black.[1141]

It was thought by the Cla.s.sical Ancients and the old English unlucky to kill Spiders; and prognostications were made from their manner of weaving their webs.[1142] It is still thought unlucky to injure these animals.

Park has the following note in his copy of Bourne and Brande's Popular Antiquities, p. 93: "Small Spiders, termed _money-spinners_, are held by many to prognosticate good luck, if they are not destroyed or injured, or removed from the person on whom they are first observed."

In Teviotdale, Scotland, "when Spiders creep on one's clothes, it is viewed as betokening good luck; and to destroy them is equivalent to throwing stones at one's own head."[1143]

In Maryland, this superst.i.tion is thus expressed: If you kill a Spider upon your clothing, you destroy the presents they are then weaving for you.

In the Secret Memoirs of Mr. Duncan Campbell, p. 60, in the chapter of omens, we read that "others have thought themselves secure of receiving money, if by chance a little Spider fell upon their clothes."[1144]

"When a Spider is found upon your clothes, or about your person," says a writer in the Notes and Queries,[1145] "it signifies that you will shortly receive some money. Old Fuller, who was a native of Northamptons.h.i.+re, thus quaintly moralizes this superst.i.tion: 'When a Spider is found upon your clothes, we used to say some money is coming toward us. The moral is this: such who imitate the industry of that contemptible creature may, by G.o.d's blessing, weave themselves into wealth and procure a plentiful estate.'"[1146]