Curious Facts in the History of Insects

Everything the nineteenth century believed about insects, collected by a man who could not stop: the beetle as omen, the bee in medicine, the locust as food, the spider in folk cure, with the classical sources quoted and the superstitions listed. Cowan was a physician, lawyer, journalist and antiquarian who once served as private secretary to President Andrew Johnson, and this is his monument — a compendium of what people knew, feared and ate. Fifty-two plates of painters such as Johan Christian Dahl and Thomas Malton carry the same antiquarian curiosity into the studio, the ruin and the sky.