278 THE CANADIAN ENTOMOLOGIST. 



of the 17th Century gave the following recipe for the manufacture 

 of snakes: "Take some snakes, roast them and cut them in small 

 pieces— then sow those pieces in an oleaginous soil; then from 

 day to day sprinkle them lightly with water from a watering pot, 

 taking care that the piece of ground be exposed to the spring sun, 

 and in eight days you will see the earth strewn with little worms, 

 which, being nourished with milk diluted with w'ater, will gradually 

 increase in size till they take the form of perfect serpents." 



Other investigators who tried this method succeeded, of course, 

 only in raising large broods of flies. Kircher noted flies also, but 

 explained their presence by saying that they were "engendered 

 from that substance which constituted the aliment of the snakes." 



For restoring dead bees to life, Columella, a Roman writer, 

 recommended that the dead bees be kept until spring and then 

 exposed to the sun among the ashes of the fig tree properly pulver- 

 ized. Another fanciful statement concerning bees is that of Aris- 

 totle, who said that the olive, the cerinthus, and other plants, had 

 the property of generating young bees from their purest juices. 

 Quoting Virgil again on bees, we have these lines: 



"From herbs and fragrant flowers, with their mouths 

 They cull their young." 



The peculiar stalked eggs of the lace-winged fly {Chrysopa sp.) 

 were at one time described as fungi, but this, however, is not 

 surprising when one considers their peculiar appearance. "Minute 

 insects flying in the air" were supposed to have some connection 

 with intestinal worms in man, and a blight was at one time described 

 as "an easterly wind attended by a blue mist." the easterly wind 

 being loaded with aphids and the eggs of various destructive insects. 

 Electric changes in the air w^ere thought by some to be responsible 

 for honey dew, and Linuceus thought that the honey dew on hop 

 leaves was due to the caterpillar of the ghost moth {Hepialns 

 humuli) attacking the roots. 



Coming to insect transformations, Heroldt explained this in a 

 novel way. He stated that "the blood of caterpillars is the only 

 original portion of them, which, being endowed with a formative 

 power, produces an envelope for itself of mucous net-work, and this 

 again by means of a similar power is successively transmuted into 

 the caterpillar, the pupa and the perfect insect." 



