INSECTS INJURIOUS TO THE VINE. 297 



and a scholiast on Aristophanes, show that the word Melolontha 

 was applied by the Greeks to insects of brilliant colours, and 

 cannot, therefore, be considered synonymous with our cock- 

 chafFer. 



Aristophanes, in his " Clouds," makes Socrates say to 

 Strepsiades, " Let your thoughts go like the Melolontha, which 

 they let go into the air with a string to its leg." The ancient 

 scholiast remarks that this Melolontha is an insect of a golden 

 colour, which the children hold with a string, and which they 

 let off to fly.s 



Now we know that in modern Greece at the present day 

 children tie a piece of thread to the legs of that beautiful golden- 

 coloured insect known to naturalists by the name of Cetonia 

 fastuosa, which is common there, and make them fly, just as 

 children here serve the common cockchaffer; the nsune Melolontha 

 must, therefore, have been applied to an insect of the genus 

 Cetonia f and not to our cockchafFer. — And here an exceedingly 

 interesting question for the antiquarian occurs, respectinaj the 

 exact interpretation of a very lemarkable passage of Pliny. 

 That naturalist, speaking of the different kinds of amulets 

 that were in use in his time for the cure of quartan agues, 

 says they made use of, for this purpose, three kinds of 

 beetles. " The first," he says, " is the beetle which rolls up 

 little balls {qui pilas volvit), and on account of which the 

 Egyptians include beetles amongst the number of the gods." 

 In this description we shall at once recognise two or three 

 insects belonging to the coprophagous family, Ateuchus sacer, 

 Fab. {Scarabwus sacer, Linn.), or A. Laticollis, and A. Eyypti- 

 orum, brought from Nubia by M. Caillaud, and recently 

 described by M. Latreille,'^ who is inclined to consider this 

 species exclusively as the sacred Scarabcmis, so often sculptured 

 by the Egyptians on their monuments, and separately out of 

 hard stones of different kinds. But it appears to me he is in 

 error. I have lately examined all the ancient figures of 

 Egyptian Scarabwi in the Bibliotheque du Roi, where the 

 specimen of Ateuchus Egyptiorum, presented by M. Caillaud, is 

 also preserved ; and I am convinced that amongst the Egyptian 

 sculptures which represent scarabwi with smooth elytra, a 

 certain number have been modelled after Ateuchus sacer, Fab. ; 



' See Camus's Notes on Aristotle's Hist. Anim. 4to. vol. ii. p. 478. 

 " Caillaud, Voyage a Mero'e et A FUuvc Blanc, p. 192 ; Atlas d'Hist. Nat. et 

 d'Ant. pi. 58. Latreille in Cuvier's liegne Anim. vol. iv. p. 533. 



