SOME FACTS AND FICTIONS OF ZOOLOGY. 97 



favor of the opinion that a knowledge of our surroundings in the 

 world and an intelligent conception of animal and plant life should 

 form part of the school-training of every boy and girl. 



The tracing of myths and fables is a very interesting task, and it 

 may, therefore, form a curious study, if we endeavor to investigate 

 very briefly a few of the popular and erroneous beliefs regarding 

 lower animals. The belief regarding the origin of the hair-worms is 

 both widely spread and ancient. Shakespeare tells us that 



" . . . . much is breeding 

 "Which, like the courser's hair, hath yet but life, 

 And not a serpent's poison." 



The hair-worms certainly present the appearance of long, delicate 

 black hairs, which move about with great activity amid the mud of 

 pools and ditches. These worms, in the early stages of their exist- 

 ence, inhabit the bodies of insects, and may be found coiled up within 

 the grasshopper, which thus gives shelter to a guest exceeding many 

 times the length of the body of its host. Sooner or later the hair- 

 worm, or Gordius, as the naturalist terms it, leaves the body of the 

 insect, and lays its eggs, which are fastened together in long strings, 

 in water. From each egg a little creature armed with minute hooks is 

 produced, and this young hair-worm burrows its way into the body of 

 some insect, there to repeat the history of its parent. Such is the 

 well-ascertained history of the hair-worm, excluding entirely the popu- 

 lar belief in its origin. There certainly does exist in science a theory 

 known as that of " spontaneous generation," which, in ancient times, 

 accounted for the production of insects and other animals by assum- 

 ing that they were produced in some mysterious fashion out of lifeless 

 matter. But not even the most ardent believer in the extreme modifi- 

 cation of this theory, which holds a place in modern scientific belief, 

 would venture to maintain the production of a hair-worm by the mys- 

 terious vivification of an inert substance such as a horse's hair. 



The expression " crocodile's tears " has passed into common use, 

 and it therefore may be worth while noting the probable origin of 

 this myth. Shakespeare, with that wide extent of knowledge which 

 enabled him to draw similes from every department of human thought, 

 says that 



" . . . . Gloster's show 



Beguiles him, as the mournful crocodile 



With sorrow snares relenting passengers." 



The poet thus indicates the belief that not only do crocodiles shed 

 tears, but that sympathizing passengers, turning to commiserate the 

 reptile's woes, are seized and destroyed by the treacherous creatures. 

 That quaint and credulous old author the earliest writer of English 

 prose Sir John Maundeville, in his " Voiage," or account of his 

 " Travaile," published about 1356 in which, by the way, there are 



VOL. XVII. *7 



