HORNETS AND WASPS 5 1 



that, as I have found out the falsehood concerning the 

 origin of those other insects supposed to arise from the 

 flesh of mules, asses, and horses, I should find the story 

 of the dead and decayed crocodile as the parent of wasps 

 and scorpions to be equally fabulous. My experiments 

 have proved just as false the accounts of Fortunio Liceto, 

 Giovanni Batista Porta, Grevino, Moufet, and Nierem- 

 berg wherein is asserted that scorpions originate from 

 buried crabs. These writers have accepted with too 

 much credulity, and too naively Pliny's doctrine, which 

 perhaps in turn was borrowed from Ovid's " Metamor- 

 phoses," 



" Concava littoreo demas si brachia cancro, 

 Caetera supponas terrae, de parte sepulta 

 Scorpius exhibit, caudaque minabitur unca." 



But Pliny adds to this saying of Ovid's a condition of 

 the kind held in veneration by the people, i. e. that this 

 work should be done on precisely those days, during 

 which the sun travels in the sign of Cancer. " Soli Can- 

 cri signum transeunte, fet ipsorum, cum examinati sint, 

 corpus transfigurari in scorpiones, narratur in siceo." 

 This fable was not in the least credited by Thomas 

 Bartholin, a man, by universal consent, numbered among 

 the greatest and most famous physicians and anatomists 

 of past and present ages, for in a letter written to the 

 learned Philip James Sachs, he repeatedly affirms having 

 observed that in Denmark, where there is an abundance 

 of crabs, scorpions do not breed in their dead bodies. 

 Sachs does not adhere however to the ideas of Bartholin ; 

 on the contrary, he believes in such generation, adding 

 that the experiments made in Denmark prove nothing 

 at all, as Northern countries are always entirely lacking 



