ITO VESPIDiE — WASPS, HORNETS. 



Ants also, he continues, will not touch a vessel with honey, 

 although the vessel may happen to be without its cover, if 

 you wrap it in white wool, or if you scatter white earth or 

 ruddle round it. If a person, continues Paxaraus, takes a 

 grain of wheat carried by an Ant wiih the thumb of his left 

 hand, and lays it in a skin of Phoenician dye, and ties it 

 round the head of his wife, it will prove to be the cause of 

 abortion in a state of gestation.^ 



Pliny says the proper remedy for the venom of the Soli- 

 puga or Solpuga Ant, and for that of all kinds of Ants, is a 

 bat's hcart.^ 



Callicrates used to make Ants, and other such little crea- 

 tures, out of ivory, with so much skill and ingenuity that 

 other men could not discern the counterfeits from the origi- 

 nals even with the help of glasses.^ 



VespidsD — Wasps, Hornets. 



Concerning the generation of the Wasp, Topsel and Moufet 

 have the following: " Isidore affirms that Wasps come out 

 of the putrefied carkasses of asses, although he may be mis- 

 taken, for all agree that the Scarabees are procreated from 

 them : rather am I of opinion with Pliny, 1. ii. c. 20, and 

 the Greek authors, that they are sprung from the dead 

 bodies of horses, for the horse is a valiant and warlike 

 creature, hence is that verse frequently and commonly used 

 among the Greeks : 



"Wasps come from horses, Bees from bulls are bred. '• 



And indeed their more than ordinary swiftnesse and their f 

 eagernesse in fight, are sufficient arguments that they can \ 

 take their original from no other creature (much less from | 

 an asse, hart, or oxe) since that Nature never granted to 

 any creatures else, to excel both in swiftness and valour. 

 And surely that I may give another sense of that proverb 

 of Aristotle, 



1 Owen's Geoponika, ii. 148-9. 



2 Nat. ILs(., xxix. 29. 



« Wanley's Wonders, i. 378. 



