The Book of the Damned

Fall of great numbers of larvae of beetles, near Mortagne, France, May, 1858. The larvae were inanimate as if with cold. (Annales Societe Entomologique de France, 1858.) Trans. Ent. Soc. of London, 1871-183, records "snowing of larvae," in Silesia, 1806; "appearance of many larvae on the snow," in Saxony, 1811; "larvae found alive on the snow," 1828; larvae and snow which "fell together," in the Eifel, Jan. 30, 1847; "fall of insects," Jan. 24, 1849, in Lithuania; occurrence of larvae estimated at 300,000 on the snow in Switzerland, in 1856. The compiler says that most of these larvae live underground, or at the roots of trees; that whirlwinds uproot trees, and carry away the larvae--conceiving of them as not held in masses of frozen earth--all as neatly detachable as currants in something. In the Revue et Magasin de Zoologie, 1849-72, there is an account of the fall in Lithuania, Jan. 24, 1849--that black larvae had fallen in enormous numbers. Larvae thought to have been of beetles, but described as "caterpillars," not seen to fall, but found crawling on the snow, after a snowstorm, at Warsaw, Jan. 20, 1850. (All the Year Round, 8-253.) Flammarion (The Atmosphere, p. 414) tells of a fall of larvae that occurred Jan. 30, 1869, in a snowstorm, in Upper Savoy: "They could not have been hatched in the neighborhood, for, during the days preceding, the temperature had been very low"; said to have been of a species common in the south of France. In La Science Pour Tous, 14-183, it is said that with these larvae there were developed insects.