318 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD 



not that it already has a meaning which immediately 

 occurs to the mind. This Latin expression means 

 a fuller; a person who kneads and presses cloth under 

 a stream of water, making it flexible and ridding it 

 of the asperities of weaving. What connection has 

 the subject of this chapter with the fuller of cloth ? 

 I may puzzle my head in vain : no acceptable reply 

 will occur to me. 



The term fullo as applied to an insect is found in 

 Pliny. In one chapter the great naturalist treats of 

 remedies against jaundice, fevers, and dropsy. A little 

 of everything enters into this antique pharmacy : the 

 longest tooth of a black dog ; the nose of a mouse 

 wrapped in a pink cloth ; the right eye of a green 

 lizard torn from the living animal and placed in a 

 bag of kid-skin ; the heart of a serpent, cut out with 

 the left hand ; the four articulations of the tail of a 

 scorpion, including the dart, wrapped tightly in a 

 black cloth, so that for three days the sick man can 

 see neither the remedy nor him that applies it; and 

 a number of other extravagances. We may well close 

 the book, alarmed at the slough of the imbecility whence 

 the art of healing has come down to us. 



In the midst of these imbecilities, the preludes of 

 medicine, we find a mention of the "fuller." Tertium 

 qui vocatur fullo, albis guttis, dissedum utrique lacerto 

 adalligant, says the text. To treat fevers divide the 

 fuller beetle in two parts and apply half under the 

 right arm and half under the left. 



Now what did the ancient naturalist mean by the 

 term " fuller beetle " ? We do not precisely know. 

 The qualification albis gutlis, white spots, would fit 



