2 Catalogue of Chaetopoda 



To Pliny and his contemporaries, and to his successors during the 

 next sixteen centuries, the names Hirvdo and Litmhricus^ had a 

 much wider significance than they have at the present day ; these 

 writers inchided leeches of all kinds under the name Hirudo, and 

 they applied the designation Lumhricus to intestinal worms or to 

 earthworms,- or so used it as to include both. 



From the time of Pliny onwards for more than a thousand years 

 little real advance was made in regard to the knowledge of worms. 

 During this period various authors repeated, wholly or in part, the 

 accounts of Aristotle and Pliny, sometimes with fanciful embellish- 

 ments, but, for the most part, they added little or nothing new. 

 Most of the references to worms in these old writings relate to 

 parasitic worms, leeches and earthworms, and especially to the 

 medicinal use of the two latter. The treatise " De Animalibus " in 

 he works of Isidorus, Bishop of Seville (560-636 a.d.), is noteworthy 

 for a chapter ^ — " De Vermibus " — under which heading are included 

 Sanguisuga [leeches], parasitic worms (" Vermes carnium "), namely, 

 Lumhricus, Ascaridae, etc., and also Multijjes [centipedes],* Scorpio, 

 Limax, Bomhyx, Teredo, etc. Isidorus placed the Vermes next the 

 snakes, but took care to point out the fundamental distinction 

 between them, that is, that the former are without a backbone — 

 " non est illi spinae rigor." 



Albcrtus Magnus' (1193-1280) "De Animalibus" contains brief 

 notes, based chiefly on the works of previous writers, especially 

 Pliny, on the marine scolopendra, Seta \i.e. Gordius\, Sanguisuga and 

 Lumhricus. 



Edward Wotton ^ (1552) gave a clearly ^vl•itten digest of previous 

 works, but added little new information ; in his description of fishes 

 reference is made to leeches and, in the chapter on " Insects," to 

 Scolopendra marina, Intestina terrae \i.e. earthworms], Ascaridae and 

 other parasitic worms. 



Shortly after the middle of the sixteenth century there appeared, 

 in close succession, two great memoirs, both of which contained new 

 observations on worms, evidently made on living specimens. Belon ^ 



' Pliny, op. cit., Lib. xxxii, cap. xlii, 2; Lib. xi, cap. lii, 1. 



^ E.g., L. J. Mod. Columella, De Ee Eustica, Lib. vi, cap. xxv ; Lib. vii, 

 cap. ix. [Probably written early in the first century.] 



^ Orig. sive Etymolog, Lib. xii, cap. v, p. 106, in Opera Omnia, Emend. J. 

 du Breul, Coloniae Agrippinae (1617). 



* The words within square brackets are not in the origiaal ; they are 

 explanatory comments of the present writer. 



* De Differentiis Animaliimi, Paris (1552). 

 '' De Aquatilibus, Libri duo, Paris (1553), 



