22 GENERATION OF INSECTS 
the Stoics asserted that human beings sprang forth from 
the soil of hill and plain like sprouting mushrooms. It 
was the general belief that they did not originate every- 
where, but arose in some special place or country; hence 
the Egyptians, the Ethiopians, and the Phrygians gave 
the credit to their own lands, and the Arcadians, Phoe- 
nicians, and inhabitants of Attica put forth their claims. 
The Athenians, as a sign that the fathers of the human 
race originated in Greece (being born from the soil direct 
as even now grasshoppers are supposed to be born) wore 
golden ornaments in the hair fashioned like the grass- 
hopper. But whatever may have been the country of 
origin, according to the teaching of Archelaus, a pupil 
of Anaxagoras, light, arid soil would not do nor would 
a mere sand bank serve the purpose of creation. It was 
necessary that the ground should be rich, warm, and 
capable of germination, whereupon a milky substance 
would be produced forming the first food of man and 
beast. 
Those creatures living in the early days of the world 
were, according to Empedocles and Epicurus, born all 
at once, hastily and in disorder from the womb of Earth, 
still unused to motherhood. Such haphazard generation 
resulted in great confusion; some animals were born 
without mouths and without arms, others without eyes 
and without legs; some creatures with monstrous graft- 
ing of hands and feet tumbled about headless; still others 
were seen with a human head and the body of a beast; 
others had foreparts of beasts and the nether limbs of 
man; and certain ones were perhaps made in such guise 
as the poets describe the Minotaur of Crete, the Sphinx, 
the Chimera, the Siren, and winged horse of Perseus, 
or like the Atlante of Corena described by Ariosto: 
