74 LEISURE-TIME STUDIES. 



amidst the mud of pools and ditches. These worms, in the 

 early stages of their existence, inhabit the bodies of insects, 

 and may be found coiled up within the grasshopper, which 

 thus gives shelter to a guest exceeding many times the 

 length of the body of its host. Sooner or later the hair- 

 worm, or Gordius aquaticus as the naturalist terms it, leaves 

 the body of the insect, and lays its eggs, fastened together 

 in long strings, in water. From each egg a little creature 

 armed with minute hooks is produced, and this young hair- 

 worm burrows its way into the body of some insect, there 

 to repeat the history of its parent. Such is the well-ascer- 

 tained history of the hair-worm, excluding entirely the 

 popular belief in its origin. There certainly does exist in 

 science a theory known as that of " spontaneous generation," 

 which, in ancient times, accounted for the production of 

 insects and other animals by assuming that they were pro- 

 duced in some mysterious fashion out of lifeless matter. 

 But not even the most ardent believer in the extreme 

 modification of this theory which holds a place in modern 

 scientific belief, would venture to maintain the production 

 of a hair-worm by the mysterious vivification of an inert 

 substance such as a horse's hair. 



The expression "crocodile's tears" has passed into com- 

 mon use, and it therefore may be worth while noting the 

 probable origin of this myth. Shakespeare, with that wide 

 extent of knowledge which enabled him to] draw similes 

 from every department of human thought, says that 



" Gloster's show 



Beguiles him, as the mournful crocodile 

 With sorrow snares relenting passengers." 



The poet thus indicates the belief that not only do crocodiles 

 shed tears, but that sympathising passengers, turning to com- 

 miserate the reptile's woes, are seized and destroyed by 

 the treacherous creatures. That quaint and credulous old 

 author the earliest writer of English prose Sir John 

 Maundeville, in his "Voiage," or account of his "Travaile," 



