80 Journal New York Entomological Society. [Voi. xxiii. 



Mr. Dow read a paper under the title " Fragmenta Archaica et Achaica," 

 being extracts from " A ?Iistory of Insect Observation in all Ages," of which 

 he has furnished the following abstract: "The first was the 'Insects of the 

 Avesta,' to which a date, 6300 B. C, is ascribed by Aristotle. The fourth 

 thing in order of creation by the Daemon was the wasp, sure death to cattle 

 and fields. The others were the locust, scorpion, flies, lice and two kinds of 

 ants. In classic Persian a tribe of Derbices is mentioned, the word meaning 

 wasps. This throws light on the Egyptian belief that wasps' stings were fatal 

 to cattle, and the Greek belief that human life was unsupportable north of 

 the Black Sea on account of the great number of wasps. 



Then followed an argument that the honey bee was domesticated by the 

 Turanian long before it was known to the Iranian races, the parents of present 

 Europeans. It was conceded prior to the Christian Era by the Egyptian 

 scholars that the Turanian races of Scj'thia and Phrygia were older than them- 

 selves. The term " sweeter than honey " occurs in the first Lama of the 

 Kalmuck, dating 80,000 years after the birth of the human race and at the 

 time of an event comparable with the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. 

 In subsequent discussion Dr. W. T. Forbes brought out the very important 

 point that the medieval word " mead " is the same as the Greek " methu " or 

 " methe," usually translated as wine but really meaning a solution of honey 

 and water and subjected to alcoholic fermentation. Compare the present word 

 "methyl" alcohol. This proves that although no common word for honey 

 bee existed, the honey drink was known before the Greeks separated from 

 the Germaj; and English peoples. 



Undex the subtitle of " The Sweet Singers of Pallas Athen " there was 

 presented the classical history of the mistranslated Tettix, the Cicada; Acris, 

 the grasshopper and Attelabus, the Cricket, the singer of sorrow. The Tettix 

 was the sweet singer of the Gods, placed in the constellations, devoted to two 

 great gods, bloodless, painless, eating nothing except the dew, but itself 

 eaten in larval form by the Athenians. They were the autochthones of Attica, 

 before the arrival of the human race. The Acri? is the voracious grass- 

 hopper, which served John the Baptist for food and was eaten generally by 

 the Greeks. They originated from a mortal who was presented with im- 

 mortalty but not perpetual youth, and the word is equivalent to the spindle 

 shanks of the old man. 



Various medical formulae, dating prior to 300 B. C, were given, including 

 pulverized tettix and bed bugs. 



From the Sanscrit, possibly not later than 6000 B. C, there was de- 

 scribed the annual festive day devoted to the flies, which were fed on flour 

 and sweet stuff. Believers in the Sanscrit religion were forbidden to kill 

 even the fleas and bed bugs. 



Mr. Dow' was asked about the kind of Orthoptera which the ancients kept 

 in cages, and he said he presumed they were either crickets or true grass- 

 hoppers. 



Mr. Bather, who has traveled in Portugal, spoke of the popularity of its 



