172 PROC. ENT. SOC. WASH., VOL. 24, NO. 7-8, OCT. -NOV., 1922 



history of the insect itself. Such are Cowper's Translations from 

 Bourne, as "The Silk-Worm": 



"The beams of April, ere it goes, 

 A worm scarce visible, disclose; 

 All winter long content to dwell 

 The tenant of his native shell. 



"The same prolific season gives 

 The sustenance by which he lives, 

 The mulberry leaf, a simple store, 

 That serves him, till he needs no more." 



Other verses of this character are quoted in various parts of the 

 present paper. The longest poem in the language, devoted to 

 an entomological, theme, is Spenser's "Fate of a Butterfly" 

 and perhaps the shortest is Burns's quatrain on the "Book- 

 Worm," quoted elsewhere. One of the most amusing of poems 

 depending upon insects for the point of the jest is Oliver Wendell 

 Holmes's "Stethoscope Song," which relates the story of a young 

 doctor: 



"There was a young man in Boston town, 

 He bought him a stethoscope nice and new, 

 All mounted and finished and polished down, 

 With an ivory cap and a stopper too. 



"It happened a spider within did crawl, 

 And spun him a web of ample size, 

 Wherein there chanced one day to fall 

 A couple of very imprudent flies. 



"The first was a bottle-fly, big and blue; 

 The second was smaller, and thin and long; 

 So there was a concert between the two, 

 Like an octave flute and a tavern gong." 



The poem then relates the lamentable errors into which this 

 young disciple of Aesculapius was led, several of which were of 

 quite as fatal a character as usual, but the spider drops out of 

 the story and we are left to wonder why he did not eat the flies, 

 and thus reduce the prevailing rate of human mortality. 



A list of the-more important entomological poems is appended 

 below. 



Araneida: 



To the Little Spinners Robert Herrick; To a Spider Robert Southey; 

 To a Spider Samuel Low. 



Suctoria: 



The Flea John Donne. 



Siphunculata: 



To a Louse Robert Burns. 



