52 GENERATION OF INSECTS 



in scorpions. Nevertheless, I feel inclined to believe (be 

 it said with all due deference to such a worthy man of 

 letters) that Sachs is perhaps mistaken, as are all the 

 aforesaid modern authors in common with Ovid and 

 Pliny. Not content with having scorpions come out of 

 crabs, Pliny would have it that sweet basil, when 

 pounded, and then covered with a stone, would also 

 breed them, and his ideas were largely followed in later 

 times by the Greek compiler of agricultural rules, who 

 however does not allow the sweet basil to be buried under 

 the stone, but avows that it must be masticated and then 

 exposed to the sun. Porta foUov/s this man's opinion, 

 but Mattiuoli and Liceto hold to that of Pliny. In fact 

 an infinite number of others attribute a like faculty to 

 this aromatic herb. Wolfgang Oeffer, quoted in Sachs's 

 " Cammaralogia," relates that, in our times, a certain 

 apothecary of Vienna, more ingenious than his fellows, 

 had found a way to breed the dangerous little creatures ar- 

 tificially. In the months of July or August, the sun being 

 in Cancer, he pounded the sweet basil thoroughly and 

 spread it over a red-hot tile to the depth of three fingers ; 

 this he covered immediately with a similar tile and ce- 

 mented the joints with mud made of sand and horse- 

 dung ; then he put the tiles in the cellar for a month, and 

 afterwards on opening them, he found the scorpions 

 ready born inside. Whereupon the good man made use 

 of them for all purposes in which scorpions are medically 

 efficacious. 



An old opinion, though it be false, has great power 

 over the minds of men. It is therefore not strange that 

 Jacques Houllier, a physician of great repute, should be- 

 lieve, as is stated in Book first of his '* Practice of Medi- 



