92 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



animals or from living or decaying plants. The honey-bee, for 

 instance, was said to come from the carcass of a sheep or an ox ; 

 the wasp and bumble-bee from that of a horse ; the Scarabaeids 

 from an ass, and a host of other insects were made to originate 

 similarly, some from cheese, some from plants, and others from 

 mud, mire, and ooze. Aristotle, for instance, made the butterfly 

 originate from caterpillars, and caterpillars from cabbage leaves, 

 and Pliny, pushing the origin a little further back, has the but 

 terfly come from " the dew which settles on the radish leaf in 

 the early days of the spring, but when it has been thickened by 

 the action of the sun it becomes reduced to the size of a grain 



C5 



of millet. From this a small grub afterwards arises, which, at 

 the end of three days, becomes transformed into a caterpillar," 

 etc. (Bohn, chap. 37). 



Pliny and Aristotle were both well aware that certain insects 

 reproduced by means of eggs, or in some cases viviparously, after 

 the coupling of the sexes. Aristotle admits this to be true of 

 spiders, crickets, and locusts, and Pliny describes with fair 

 accuracy the habits in this regard of spiders, scorpions, grasshop 

 pers, cicadas, dung-beetles, and intimates as much for certain flies, 

 bees, and ants, but in Book XI, chap. 37 (Bohn) and subsequent 

 chapters, he repeats, with evident approval, many of the ancient 

 ideas of the Greeks and probably also of the Phoenicians, Hebrews, 

 and Egyptians* concerning spontaneous generation. He has 

 various species coming from dew, earth, rotting wood, the tape 

 worm in man, others from carrion, the hair of man, or 

 feathers of birds, others in filth, as fleas ; from dust in wools and 

 clothes, as the clothes moth, describing particularly the case-bearer 

 {pellionella} . The fig, rose, etc., engender the insects charac 

 teristic of them ; sour liquids, gnats ; snow, long on the ground, 

 snow-fleas or grubs ; and fire, a peculiar insect which may be the 

 " Fire brat" of our day {Tkermobia domestica Pack). 



Much pains were necessary to uproot and destroy these very 

 generally held ideas, the origin of which can be readily under 

 stood from our knowledge of relation of insect to living plants 

 and to dead or decaying animal and vegetable matter. These 

 views were held as late as the beginning of the iSth century, as, 



*See Osten Sacken : On the Bugonia Lore of the aneients. 



