228 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 228. 



brute and human, generated insects ; but of all 

 sources of this equivocal generation, none was 

 considered more potent than the putrefaction or 

 corruption of animal matter : as Du Bartas says : 



" God, not contented to each kind to give, 

 And to infuse the virtue generative, 

 I By His wise power, made many creatures breed, 

 Of lifeless bodies without Venus' deed." 



Sixth Day. 



Pliny, after giving Virgil's receipt for making 

 bees, gives similar instances : 



" Like as dead horses will breed waspes and hornets ; 

 and asses carrion, turne to be beetle-flies by a certaine 

 metamorphosis which Nature maketh from one creature 

 to another." — Lib. xi. c. xx. 



And soon after he says of wasps : 



" All the sorte of these live upon flesh, contrarie to 

 the manner of bees, which will not touch a dead carcasse." 



This brings Shakspeare's lines to mind : 



" 'Tis seldom when the bee doth leave her comb 

 In the dead carrion." 



Henry IV., Part II. Act IV. Sc. 4. 



The Belfast News Letter of Friday, Aug. 10, 

 1832, gives one of these rare occurrences : 



" A few days ago, when the sexton was digging a 

 grave in Temple Cranney (a burying-place in Porta- 

 ferry, co. Down), he came to a coffin which had been 

 there two or three years: this he thought necessary to 

 remove. In this operation, he was startled by a great 

 quantity of wild bees issuing forth from the coffin ; 

 and upon lifting the lid, it was found that they had 

 formed their combs in the dead man's skull and mouth, 

 which were full. The nest was made of the hair of 

 the head, together with shavings that had been put in 

 the coffin with the corpse." 



This quotation is given in an interesting work of 

 Mr. Patterson's, Letters on the Natural History 

 of the Insects mentioned in Shakspeare's Plays : 

 London, 1838. 



Your correspondent R. T. shows that serpents 

 were supposed to be generated by human car- 

 cases. Pliny says : 



" I have heard many a man say that the marrow of a 

 man's backebone will breed to a snake." — Hist. Nat., 

 x. 66. 



The story of the "fair young German gentleman" 

 reminds me of one of a gentle shepherd and his 

 beloved Amarante, told in De Britaine's Human 

 Prudence, 12th edit., Dublin, 1726, Parti, p. 171. 

 The corpse of the " Caesar," seen by St. Augustine 

 and Monica, was most probably that of Maximus, 

 Emperor of the West, slain by the soldiers of 

 Theodosius, a.d. 388. 



Sir Thos. Browne — treating of the conceit that 

 the mandrake grows under gallowses, and arises 



from the fat, or olpov, of the dead malefactor, and 

 hence has the form of a man — says : 



" This is so far from being verified of animals in 

 their corruptive mutations into plants, that they main- 

 tain not this similitude in their nearer translation into 

 animals. So when the ox corrupteth into bees, or the 

 horse into hornets, they come not forth in the image of 

 their originals. So the corrupt and excrementitious 

 humours in man are animated into lice : and we may 

 observe that hogs, sheep, goats, hawks, hens, and others, 

 have one peculiar and proper kind of vermin." — 

 Works, Bonn's edit., vol. i. p. 197. 



The editor furnishes the following note : 



" The immortal Harvey, in his De Generatione, 

 struck the first blow at the root of the irrational system 

 called equivocal generation, when he laid down his brief 

 but most pungent law, Omnia ex ovo. But the belief 

 transmitted from antiquity, that living beings generated 

 spontaneously from putrescent matter, long maintained 

 its ground, and a certain modification of it is even still 

 advocated by some naturalists of the greatest acuteness. 

 The first few pages of the volume entitled Insect 

 Transformations (in The Library of Entertaining Know- 

 ledge') are occupied by a very interesting investigation 

 of tiiis subject." — See also Sir T. Browne's Works, 

 vol. i. p. 378., vol. ii. pp. 523, 524. ; and Izaak Walton's 

 Complete Angler, passim. 



The equivocal generation of bees is copiously 

 dwelt on in Bochart's Hierozoicon, London, 1663, 

 fol., Part II. p. 502. Instances of their attaching 

 themselves to dead bodies, in spite of their ordi- 

 nary antipathy, are given at p. 506. Eirionnach. 



VANDYKE IN AMERICA. 



(Vol.viii., pp. 182. 228.) 



To your correspondent C. I would say, that his 

 observation — that the Query was as to an en- 

 graving, whilst my answer was as to a picture — 

 is not true ; as I am sure, from memory, that Mr. 

 Westmacott used the word " portraits." But I 

 plead in extenuation of my pretended grave 

 offence, 1. That the Query was not propounded 

 by C, but by a gentleman to whom the informa- 

 tion given might be, as I supposed, of some in- 

 terest ; more particularly as I referred to the 

 Travels of an Englishman, both of which, author 

 and work, were accessible. 2. That, in common 

 with the American readers of "N. & Q.," I re- 

 garded it as " a journal of inter-communication," 

 through whose columns information might be 

 asked for, the request to be treated with the same 

 consideration and courtesy as though addressed to 

 each individual subscriber. I may add that Lord 

 Braybrooke and Mr. Wodderspoon (Vol. iv., 

 p. 17.) have urged "the necessity for recording 

 the existence of painted historical portraits, scat- 

 tered, as we know they are," &c. 



