48 GENERATION OF INSECTS 



more venomous ; which statement is confirmed by ^lianus 

 in chapter 15 book 9 of the '' History of Animals," where 

 he relates that wasps hasten to infect their sting with 

 the toxin of the dead viper; from which human malice 

 subsequently got the art of poisoning darts. Ulysses, 

 as is recounted in the Odyssey, sailed to Ephyra to learn 

 this art from a certain Ilus Mermerida, and Hercules, 

 still earlier than Ulysses, as is told, made his arrows 

 deadly by dipping them in the Hydra's blood. It is not 

 credible that the stings of wasps and hornets are poison- 

 ous because these insects have fed indiscriminately on 

 serpent's flesh, for that could be granted only in case 

 they had dipped their stings in the fatal liquid hidden in 

 the sheaths that cover the canines of the viper, as I 

 stated in my " Observations of Vipers." If indeed wasps 

 and hornets possessed this malicious natural disposition 

 (as ^lianus asserts), I for one, would not be willing to 

 believe it. In the remaining fragment of a book of Theo- 

 phrastus, preserved in the Library of Fozio, on " Ani- 

 mals that are supposed to be malicious," he sagely holds 

 that malice is never found in animals that are not en- 

 dowed with speech. For if the newt, as people say, eats 

 its cast off skin ; if the sea calf, on being caught, vomits 

 its rennet ; if mares tear from their foals' heads the fab- 

 ulous hippomane and devour it; if the deer (which is also 

 a lie) hides his right horn underground when it falls off; 

 if the lynx conceals his urine from the sight of man ; and 

 if the hedgehog, when caught by the hunter, spoils his 

 skin by urinating on it; these acts, according to Theo- 

 phrastus, are performed either through fear or for some 

 other reason peculiar to the animals in question, but not 

 because they maliciously desire to deprive man of those 

 excrements, which the common people believe to be use- 



