FARMERS' REGISTER— ON THE GENERATION OF INSECTS. 



341 



Meanwhile the juices in the tender bones 

 Heatp(i iennent; and, wond'rousto behold, 

 Small animals, in clusters, thick are seen, 

 Sliovt of their legs at first: on filmy wings. 

 Humming, at length they rise; and more and more 

 Fan the thin air; 'till, numberless as drops 

 Pour'd down in rain I'rom summer clouds, they fly. 

 Trapp's Virgil, Georg. iv. 369. 



Columella, a Roman writer on rural afiairs, after 

 dirertino' in what manner honey is to be taken 

 from a iiive bv killing the bees, says, that if the 

 dead bees be kept till sprints, and then exposed to 

 the sun among the ashes of the fig-tree, properly 

 pulverised, they may be restored to life. 



These tancies have evidently originated from 

 mistaking certain species of flies {Syrphi, Bom- 

 bylii, ^-c.) for bees, which, indeed, they much re- 

 semble in general ajipearance, though they have 

 only ttoo wings, and short antcnncC, while all bees 

 have four wings, and long antenna?. Neither the 

 flies nor the bees arc produced by putrefaction; — 

 but as the flies are found about animal bodies in a 

 state of decomposition, the ancients Ml into an 

 error which accurate observation alone could ex- 

 plode. The maggots of blow-flies, as Swammer- 

 dam remarks, so often found in the carcasses of 

 animals in summer, "somewhat resemble those 

 produced by the eggs of bees. However ridi- 

 culous," he adds, "the opmion must appear, many 

 great men have not been ashamed to adopt and 

 defend it. The industrious Goedart has ventured 

 to ascribe the origin ol' bees to certain dunghill 

 worms,* and the learned De Mei joins with him 

 in this opinion; though neither of them had any 

 observation to ground their belief upon, but that of 

 the external resemblance between bees and certain 

 kinds of flies (SyrphidcB) produced from those 

 womis. The nustake of such authors should 

 teach us," he continues, "to use gi-eat caution in 

 our determinations concerning things which we 

 have not thoroughly examined, or at least to de- 

 scribe them with all the circumstances observable 

 in them. Therefore, although this opinion of bees 

 issuing from the carcasses of some other animals 

 by the power of putrefaction, or by a transposition 

 of parts, be altogether absurd, it has had, notwith- 

 standing, many followers, who must have in a 

 manner shut their eyes in order to embrace it. 

 But whoever ^vill attentively consider how many 

 requisites there are for the due hatching of the 

 bee's egg, and for its subsistence in the grub state 

 cannot be at a loss for a clue to deliver himself 

 out of that labyrinth of idle lancies and unsup- 

 ported fables, which, entangled with one another 

 like a Gordian knot, have even to this day ob- 

 scured the beautiful simplicity of this part of na- 

 tural history. "t 



Redi was by no means satisfied with the first 

 resuhs of his experiments upon the flesh of snakes, 

 lor several species of flies were produced, giWng 

 some countenance to the opinion of Aristotle, 

 Pliny, Mouffet, and others, that different flesh en- 

 genders different flies, inheriting the disposition of 

 the animal they are bred from. He accordingly 

 fried almost every species of flesh, fish, and fowl, 

 both raw and cooked, and soon discovered (as he 



* The maggots of Eristalis tenax, Fabr. E. apifor- 

 mis, Meigen, and other Si/rphidae, well known in 

 common sewers by their long tails, like those of rats. 



t Swamraerd. Book of Nature, i, 228. 



could not fail to do) that the same maggots and 

 flies were produced indiscriminately in all. This 

 ultimately led him to ascertain that no matrfots 

 are ever generated excc|)t li-om eggs laid by the 

 parent flies: for when he carefulfy covered up 

 pieces of meat with silk or paper sealed down with 

 wax, no maggots were seen; but the parent flies, 

 attracted by the smell of the covered meat, not un- 

 frequently laid their eggs on the outside of^ the pa- 

 per or silk, the maggots hatched fr-om these dyino- 

 of course, lor want of nourishment- 



With respect to bees, it becomes even more ab- 

 surd to refer their generation to putrefaction, when 

 we consider that they uniformly manifest a pecu- 

 liar antipathy to dead carcasses. This was re- 

 marked so long ago as the time of Aristotle and 

 of Pliny;* and Varro asserts that bees nei'er alight 

 upon an unclean place, nor upon any thing which 

 emits an unpleasant smell. This is strikingly cx- 

 emphfied in their carrj ing out of the hive the 

 bodies of their companions who chance to die 

 there; and in their covering over with j/ropolis the 

 bodies of snails, mice,t and other small animals 

 which they cannot remove. J 



It would have been well if such unfounded 

 fancies had rested here; but philosophical thcoris-ts, 

 both of ancient and modem times, have promul- 

 gated dreams much more extravagant. The an- 

 cients taught that the newly-formed earth (hatch- 

 ed as some said from an egg} clothed itself with a 

 green down like that on young birds, and soon 

 after men began to sprout up from the ground as 

 •\ve now see mushrooms do. The refined Athe- 

 nians were so firmly convinced of their having 

 orimnally sprung up in this manner, that they 

 called themselves "Earth-born" ( Erkhthnnii , ) 

 and wore golden tree-hoppers ( Cicadca) in their 

 hair, en-oneously supposing these insects to have 

 a common origin with themselves.§ Lucretius 

 affirms, that even in his time, when the earth was 

 supposed to be growing too old to be reproductive, 

 "many animals were concreted out of mud by 

 showers and sunshine. "IT 



But the ancients, it would appear, had the 

 shrewdness seldom to venture upon illustrations of 

 their philosiphical romances by particular exam- 

 ples. This was reserved for the more reckless 

 theory-buflders of our own times. We find Ro- 

 binet, for example, asserting that, as it was nature's 

 chief object to make man, she began her "appren- 

 tissage," as he calls it, by forming minerals re- 

 sembling the single organs of the human body, 

 such as the brain in the fossil called Brain-stone 

 ( Meandrina ccrebriformis, Parkinsok.JH Dar- 

 win, again, taking the hint from Epicurus, dreams 

 that animals arose from a single filament or thread- 

 let of matter, which, by its efforts to procure nour- 



* Aristotle, Hist. Animal, ix. 40. Pliny says, "Om- 

 nes carne vescuntur, contra quam apes, quae nullum 

 corpus attingnut. 



t Huish on Bees, p. 100. 



X Insect Architecture, p. 109. 



§ The Cicadae do not deposite their eggs in the 

 earth, but on trees, &c. See Insect Jlrchilecture, chap, 

 vii. 



II Multaque nunc etiam existunt animalia terris, 

 Imbribus et calido solis concreta vapore. 



De Nat. Rer. v. 795. 



II Robinet, Consid. Philosophiques de la Gradation 

 Naturelle des Formes de I'Etre. Paris, 1768. 



