HA RD WICKE'S SCIENCE- G OSS I P. 



ii 



including Entomology ; consequently no books 

 treating of insects are to be found. But as there is 

 an exception to every rule, so we find some few men 

 turning their attention to Nature, and even noticing 

 insects briefly in their works, though their ideas were 

 necessarily very vague, and many of their opinions 

 exceedingly erroneous. We may even go back past the 

 middle ages — past the Roman era — to that great age 

 of arts, sciences, and literature — the Grecian, to find 

 the first notice of insects recorded. We cannot now 

 tell who was the first man the world saw who con- 

 descended to observe and write about them ; but this 

 we do know, that Aristotle, who wrote more than 

 three centuries before the Christian era, took a great 

 deal of his information from previous observers, 

 whose names have perished, but some of whose 

 observations are included in Aristotle's works ; there- 

 fore we must rest content to know that some 

 naturalists did exist so far back in time, but we can 

 only commence our list of names with Aristotle, the 

 tutor of Alexander the Great, who was born in 

 •Greece, B.C. 384. This great philosopher and 

 naturalist wrote, among many other works, a 

 *' History of Animals," in which he included all that 

 was then known relative to the history of insects. 

 He is reported to have written this book at the 

 express desire of Alexander the Great, who en- 

 couraged and supported him in a truly royal manner ; 

 for he not only supplied him with money for the 

 undertaking to the amount of 800 talents, but in his 

 Asiatic expedition employed above 1,000 men to 

 collect animals, which were carefully transmitted to 

 the philosopher ! 



Aristotle, in his "History," describes the habits of 

 those species of insects most generally known ; 

 among Lepidoptera he notices the various kinds of 

 Tinea, feeding on wool, fur, books, &c, and one on 

 honeycomb — no doubt Gallcria cerella ; and he also 

 relates how butterflies are produced from caterpillars. 

 Among the Hymenoptera he gives the mode of life 

 and economy of the honey bee, the wild bee, the 

 humble bee, the wasp, the hornet, and the ant ; 

 other species he describes are the grasshopper and the 

 locust. Aristotle does not in his work draw up in a 

 tabular form any classification of insects, but from his 

 writings we are enabled to gather that he divided 

 them by what is called the wing system, making two 

 primary divisions, the winged and the wingless, and 

 subdividing the former into six, and the latter into 

 two families. From all this it will be seen that 

 Aristotle, without doubt, paid some attention to the 

 insect world ; and though he did certainly entertain 

 some very curious ideas on the subject, he was not so 

 ignorant of the truth as is generally supposed. We 

 often come across Aristotle's theory of the generation 

 of flies, set forth as a sample of his entomological 

 knowledge. He says, "Flies spring from dead 

 animals of their own accord " — a popular error even at 

 the present day, though more than 2, 100 years have | 



passed away since Aristotle wrote it ; and further 

 that " the flies inherit the nature of the animals from 

 which they spring ; " thus a lion will produce fierce 

 flies which will attack and sting, while inoffensive 

 flies spring from domesticated and peacefully inclined 

 animals ! But this is not at all a fair example to 

 quote, after the list of insects I have given above, 

 whose life histories he sketches fairly correctly ; and 

 I think that Aristotle's entomological knowledge has 

 been greatly maligned. 



Passing from the Greeks to the Romans, the name 

 of Pliny the Elder figures as the great naturalist 

 historian. He was a very ardent student of Nature, 

 and wrote several books on the subject, one of which 

 (No. 11) is divided into 23 articles devoted to insects, 

 which however treat chiefly of bees ; these he holds 

 as his fixed opinion spring from certain flowers. 

 Pliny met with his death during the eruption of 

 Mount Vesuvius which destroyed Pompeii, A.D. 79. 



Virgil, the great Latin elegiac poet, also wrote 

 of bees, devoting the whole of the fourth book of the 

 Georgics to their economy. Concerning their origin 



he says : 



" From herbs and fragrant flowers 

 They cull their young." 



— an idea far more poetical than correct. 



Beyond these two writers, with the exception 



perhaps of Columella, who is supposed to have 



lived in the first century, and who in his work on 



Agriculture devoted some attention to bees, no further 



notice was taken of insects during the Roman era. 



After the decline of the Roman empire all literature 



fell to a low ebb in Europe, and excepting by 



/Elian, Natural Science was unnoticed and unthought 



of for a long period. /Elian, a doctor, was born 



in Greece in the twelfth century, and wrote a 



" Natural History of Animals," in twenty-seven 



books, containing a short account of insects, which 



however, did not put forth anything new, merely 



quoting the opinions of Aristotle and Pliny. Thus 



we may leap over a very long period, extending 



from the first to the fifteenth century — 1500 years — 



without finding anything added to the history of 



Entomology. 



WlLLOUGHBY GARDNER. 



(7o be continued.) 



The town of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, makes 

 large uses of natural gas. The wells are situated at 

 distances from the town of about twenty miles or 

 more, the amount supplied for use is 25,000,000 

 cubic feet per day, and an enlarged supply is being 

 arranged for. It further appears from an article on 

 the subject in " Science " that all great gas- wells are 

 found on anticlinal axes, and that though it has a 

 wide range through the geological column, natural 

 gas is most abundant in the black slates of the 

 Devonian. 



