BY WHICH T»E VINE IS INFESTED. 193 



Aristophanes, in the comedy of the Clouds, puts these words into the 

 mouth of Socrates when speaking to Strepsiades : " Let go your 

 thought, like the Melolontha which is launched into the air with a 

 thread around its foot." The ancient scholiast remarks that this 

 Melolontha is an insect of a golden colour, which children hold with a 

 thread and cause to fly*. We knoAV that in modern Greece the 

 children at the present day attach a thread to the foot of the beauti- 

 ful gold-coloured insect which naturalists call the Cetonia fastuosa, 

 which is not scarce in that country, where the children amuse them- 

 selves with it in the same manner as those of our climates do with the 

 common Cockchafer ; the name of Melolontha should therefore have 

 been applied to the genus Cetonia, not to the genus Chafer. 



An interesting question in archaeology here arises, in connexion with 

 the exact interpretation of a passage of Pliny, which is well worthy of 

 attention. The Roman naturalist, speaking of the different species of 

 amulets used in his time to cure the quartan ague, says that three sorts 

 of Scarabeei are employed for this purpose. " The first," he says, " is 

 the Scarabseus which rolls pills, qui pilas volvit, and in consideration 

 of Avhich the Scarabsei are placed among the gods by a great part of 

 Egypt." This circumstance enables us to distinguish, without any 

 doubt, two or three insects of the family of the Coprophagi, the Ateu- 

 chus sacer of Fabricius (^Scarabceus sacer of Linnceus), or the Ateu- 

 chus laticollis, and the Ateuchus j^gyptiorum, brought from Nubia by 

 M. Caillaud, and recently described by M. Latreillef , who considers it 

 exclusively as the Sacred Scarabseus so often sculptured by the Egyp- 

 tians upon their monuments, and separately in hard stones of various 

 kinds. But I think tliat he is mistaken ; for I have recently examined 

 all the Scarabaei of Ancient Egypt, sculptured separately, which are 

 in the Bibliotheque du Roi, where an individual of the Ateuchus ^gyp- 

 tiorum, presented by M. Caillaud, is also preserved, and I am convinced 

 that, among the Egyptian stones representing Scarabasi with smooth 

 elytra, a certain number have been sculptured from the Ateuchus sacer 

 of Fabricius, and the others (a smaller number) from the Ateuchus 

 laticollis ; but all those stones which have the elytra striated, or with ribs 

 and longitudinal furrows, have the Ateuchus ^gyptiorum of M. Cail- 

 laud for their type. Thus the name Scarabceus, of the Egyptians, 

 is applicable to three different species, closely allied to each other cer- 

 tainlv, and having probably similar manners and habits, but which, not- 

 withstanding, it is easy to distinguish in the sculptured monuments 

 by unequivocal characters J. The Ateuchus sacer, which is black, 



• See Camus, Notes upon Aristotle's Hist. Anim., 4to, vol. ii. p. 478. 



f Caillaud, yoyaf/e a A/ero'e el mi Fleuve Blanc, p. 172, Atlas d'llist. Nat. 

 et d'Anlitj., pi. 58 : Latreille in Cuvier's Regne Jnim., vol. iv. p. 533. 



X Compare Olivier, Cul.ropl., vol. i. No. 3. p. 150. No. 183. pi. 8. fig. 59. 

 var. B. The pretended var. A. is a different insect; it has a clypeus between 



