50 GENERATION OF INSECTS 



choses donees, ils les revomissent de suite, en estant 

 piquez." Perhaps this phenomenon may have occurred 

 once, and have been observed once, which was enough 

 to give rise to a fable, that gained universal credence. 

 Be this as it may, I shall add another fable to it, namely 

 the origin of wavSps and hornets from dead flesh, al- 

 though by universal conformity of opinion it has been 

 accepted as the truth. 



Antigonus, Pliny, Plutarch, Nicander, ^lianus, and 

 Archelaus, as quoted by Varro, teach that wasps orig- 

 inate in the dead flesh of horses. Virgil admits it to be 

 also the origin of hornets. Ovid mentions only hornets : 

 " Pressus humo bellator equus crabronis origo est." 

 Thomas Moufet reports that hornets are generated in 

 the hard parts of horseflesh, and wasps in the tender 

 parts. The Greek commentators of Nicander attribute 

 the creative property to the horse's skin alone, adding 

 as a necessary condition that the horse must have been 

 bitten and torn by a wolf. But Servius, the grammarian, 

 turned everything topsy-turvy by asserting that drones 

 come from horses, hornets from mules, and wasps from 

 asses. Olimpiodorus, Pliny, Cardano and Porta insist 

 that ass-flesh gives birth to drones and beetles, but not to 

 wasps. Oro in the twenty-third chapter, book second, 

 of the " Hieroglyphics," speaks of wasps born in the flesh 

 of the crocodile ; and Antigonus in the twenty-third chap- 

 ter of " Wonderful Histories " had occasion to say that, 

 terrestrial scorpions, but not wasps are born spontane- 

 ously in the flesh of the crocodile. If such creation really 

 occurs in the flesh of this reptile, I shall not perplex my- 

 self with dwelling on it, because I have not made any 

 experiments in the case nor do I think that I shall be 

 able to make any at present. I wish firmly to believe 



