I02 



NA TURE 



[June 2, 1898 



on damp ground, it turns into another turtle : now there are men 

 who use to divide into pieces the turtle's flesh, and by adding to 

 them the Amaranth-juice, change them after ten days to turtles 

 as minute as young silkworms, which they throw in ponds under 

 the name of 'Seedling-Turtles' (C/%?/m,?- /"/V/i) " (" Yuen-kien- 

 lui-han," 1701, tom. cdxli., art. " Pieh ").J These preposterous 

 schemes of multiplying by gemmiparone process one of the 

 dainties dearest to the Celestial's palate, were doubtless an out- 

 come of erroneous observations, whereby those credulous folks 

 mistook for newly hatched turtles some insects of a turtle-like 

 configuration with the habit of thronging about the putrid animal 

 substances. 2 



(^T^) Japanese Lores concerning Eristalis tenax. — "In regard 

 to the composition of honey and the confusion of the honey-bee 

 with E. ienax \cf. (2) supra.'], the Japanese nation was far in 

 advance of its neighbours" ("A. N.," p. 19). Only single 

 instance somewhat analogous to the old western stories of the 

 Wasp and Hornet generated from dead horses, I have recited in 

 Nature, ?<i^«.w/ra, from a Japanese work. This is the belief 

 in the " Horse-Hair Wasp," so-called from the popular notion of 

 an ichneumon-fly whose ovipositors resemble horse-hairs, that it 

 is a metamorphosis of the latter ; ^ while, as Baron Osten-Sacken 

 aptly expounds, the alleged Horse-born Wasp and Horse-born 

 Hornet are both the issues of the ancients' confusion of Helo- 

 philus and Gasirophilus, with the hymenopters in question 

 (" O. B.," pp. 53-55)- , . . , 



"The occurrence of ^. /is«ajr of Japan is of very longstandmg 

 ... the people did not confound it with the bee "("O. B.," 

 p. T,T„ note; cf. "A. N.," pp. 20-22). This Japanese immunity 

 from the taint of such a widespread superstition, appears to be 

 mainly due to their early ignorance of the bee-keeping.'' Al- 

 though Japan is not destitute of the indigenous bees {cf. Kaibara, 

 " Yamato Hongo," 1708, tom. xiv. fol. 13), the comparative 

 paucity in the old Japanese literature of the allusions to honey 

 and bees, and a definite register in the national history of a 

 failure in introducing them from Corea in 643 A.D. (" Nihongi," 

 lib. xxiv.), together with the striking mbsence from the Japanese 

 language of any native name of honey,^ are sufficient to preclude 

 any ideas of the original familiarity of the Japanese with 

 apiary. 



This primitive ignorance of the honey-keeping certainly gave 

 great impulse to the early establishment by the Japanese of the 

 demarcation between the bee and the drone-fly ; which latter 

 dipteron they have properly grouped with its allies, such as 

 Tabanus, Helophilus, and Gasirophilus, under the general 

 onomatope "Abu," which corresponds with " Mang," the 

 Chinese appellation after their humming sounds— from the 

 former, no doubt, descends the modern Japanese name of E. 

 ienax, "Bun-bvyi" (cf. " O. B.," p. 20). 



That the Japanese were early acquainted with the rat-tailed 



1 Perhaps " Hwin-nan-wan-pih-shuh," attributed to Liu Ngan (c. 179- 

 122 B.C.), is the oldest work extant which mentions this sympathetic power 

 on the turtle of the " Hien," which name comprises, besides all species of 

 A marantJms, the Purslane {Portulaca oUraced). Some authors who take 

 for " Hien " the latter plant singly, tries to explain a passage in the ' ' Book 

 of Changes," where occurs the " Hien " with the Phytolacca (for the latter 

 see my letter in Nature, vol. liv. p. 343, August 13, 1896) as the_ types of 

 diabolical plants, by conceiving as devilish the remarkable resistance to 

 desiccation of the Purslane as well as its alleged influence on dead turtles 

 (Chang Urh-Ki, " Hau-ngan-hien-hwa," tome i ; Wu-Ki-Shun, " Shih-woh- 

 ming-shih-tu-kau," ed. Ono, tome iii. fol. ig, b). It is a curious contingency 

 that the word " Amaranth " is derived from Greek words — a, privative, and 

 /liapaifo), to wither (Loudon, " Encyclopaedia of Plants," 18S0, p. 787). 

 Also there is a Chinese belief in a visceral disease called "parasitic 

 turtle" (Pieh-hia), %s\6. to originate in eating turtle-flesh with the Hien 

 (" Yuen-kien-lui-han," I.e.; Chang Urh-Ki, ut supra), which error has 

 probably arisen from their confusion of some parasitic flat worms with 

 turtles. 



2 Cf. Pliny, H. N., xi. 20 : "Sicut asinorum scarabaeos mutante natura 

 ex aliis quaedam in alia." In Chinese glossaries there are names of many 

 beetles founded on the resemblance to the turtle. Certain aquatic Heter- 

 optera (e.g. Belostoma indica) that are perhaps the origin of the " Seedling- 

 Turtle" story, are called in Japanese " Tagame," or " turtle in rice-field " 

 (Terashima, " Wakan Sansai-dzue, 1713, tome liii.). 



3 For, the assimilation of the ichneumon-flies with the wasps, cf. Pliny, 

 xi. 24 : " Vespae quae ichneumone vocantur." "Ma-fang" (literally, 

 horse-wasp) occurs in Chinese ; here, however, the epithet " horse" signifies 

 "large" (cf. Kaibara, op. cit., tome ix. fol. 10, V). 



4 Even in the sixteenth century the domestication of the bees must have 

 been unknown, at least in some western provinces : for the fact is par- 

 ticularly called attention to in the narration of a Japanese ambassador sent 

 to Rome by a prince in Kyushfi : " Non hanno in quel paesi Api, ne in 

 consequenza il nobilissimo frutto del mele . . . "(" Breve Ragguaglio dell' 

 Isola del Giapone, Roma, 1582, Brit. Mus., 10,055, a. i, fol. 2, a). 



5 Only word ever used in Japan for honey is "Mitsu" (or " Michi " in 

 its obsolete form), bore a modification of Chinese "Mih," and that for the 

 honey-bee^ is " Mitsu-bachi," composed of the heterogeneous words 



" Wamyo Sho," written in the tenth century, tomes xvi. and xix.). 



larva of E. tenax, is evinced in a cyclopaedia compiled in 17 13, 

 wherein the imago and the larvae of the fly are figured and 

 described distinctly (" A. D.," p. 20). In an old vernacular 

 leechcraft, the so-called "Long-tailed Dung-Worm" {Onaga- 

 Ktisoviiishi), the larva of the fly, was prescribed as an invaluable 

 cure for rickets [Kan) (Terashima, as quoted in foot-note 4). 

 Baron Osten-Sacken already gave from my communication to 

 him a popular rhyme said to be efficacious in keeping this larva 

 away from out-houses ("A. D.," p. 21). In some provincial 

 versions of the rhyme, the larva is called " Kamisake-mushi " or 

 " Kamisake-joro " {i.e. Worm-or-Strumpet who avoids the 

 [Shintoist] Ciods).^ " Eibian," a Japanese antiquary, under- 

 stands this cursing poem to have been composed by a zealous 

 Shintoist, who might have directed it against the Buddha 

 Sakyamuni, whom it represents by the loathsome larva, and 

 whose birth took place on the day named in it (Yamazaki, 

 " Seiji Hyakudan," 1 841, chapter xli). This remark points at 

 the remote antiquity of the Japanese acquaintance with the ver 

 a queue de ral ; for, according to it, the verses must have sprung 

 in an epoch when the native and Indian creeds were yet con- 

 tending greatly in Japan. 



(4) IVie Milhraic Association of the Bees with the Lion and 

 the Oxen. — Dr. Ernest Krause, in his article, "Die mytho- 

 logische Periode der Entwickelungsgeschichte," in " Kosmos," 

 Jahr. IV., B. viii. p. 350, Leipzig, 1880, ascribes the triple 

 association of these creatures to the amalgamation of the Christian 

 legend with the classic stories. Nevertheless, the fact that these 

 trio were long in existence in Persia, before the introduction of 

 Christianity into classic regions, is evident from the ancient 

 cultus of Mithras, in which one who was initiated into the mystic 

 grade of Lion had to " wash his hands with honey collected by 

 bees who are Oxen-begotten " (Thomas Taylor, " Select Works 

 of Porphyry," 1823, p. 181) ; added to which, on an ancient 

 cylinder of recent discovery, those persons presiding on the 

 Leontic rites, are said to be represented in the tunics and 

 stoles covered with the design of honey-comb (F. Lajard, 

 " Recherches sur les Cultes publics et les Mysteres de Mithra," 

 1867, 2.e Section, p. 240, seqq.). 



(5) Astronomical and Elemental Explanations of the Bugonia 

 Myth.— In his "A. N.," pp. 12-13, Baron Osten-Sacken names 

 the three methods of treatments of this myth by the com- 

 mentators on the classic passages that concern it. To those 

 three, I may add as the fourth the following explanation by A. 

 de Gubernatis, who endeavours to treat the myth astronomically : 

 " According to Porphyrios, the moon (Selene) was also called a 

 bee (Melissa). Selene was represented drawn by two white 

 horses or two cows ; the horn of these cows seems to correspond 

 to the sting of the bee. The souls of the dead were supposed to 

 come down from the moon upon the earth in the forms of bees. 

 Porphyrios adds that as the moon is the culminating point of 

 the constellation of the bull, it is believed that bees are born in 

 the bull's carcase. Dionysos (the moon), after having been torn 

 to pieces in the form of a bull, was born again, according to 

 those who were initiated in the Dionysian mysteries, in the form 

 of a bee ; hence the name of Bougenes, given to Dionysos 

 (moon). . . Sometimes, in.stead of the lunar bull, we find the 

 solar lion" ("Zoological Mythology," vol ii. p. 217, London, 

 1872). The fifth method, as it might be, seeks in the Bugonia 

 an " elemental " myth, as we find it in F. Lajard's work, quoted 

 above. According to this authority, the Ox and the Lion appear 

 to have symbolised in the creed of ancient Persians what the 

 Chinese have designated respectively with the terms of " Yin" 

 (" negativeness")and "Yang " ("positiveness") {cf. my letter in 

 Nature, vol. li. p. 32, November 8, 1894) ; and the Mithraic 

 association of the Leontic grade with honey (compare last para- 

 graph) is solvable by the reason that honey contains an essence 

 extremely combustible (extremely " positive " in Chinese 

 philosophy), which is wax (p. 242). It is highly probable that 

 the association of the bees with the oxen existed in the same 

 cultus of Mithras {cf Taylor, I.e.), as we can adduce it from the 

 Persian cosmogony, which states that, the First Bull, the first of 

 all beings created by Armuzd, having been slain by the jealous 

 Ahriman, his soul, the Ized Goschorum, issued from his left 

 shoulder, and after collecting the sperm of the terrestrial bull, 

 carried it to moon, where it became the germ of all creatures 

 (see Lajard, p. 49 ; cf. the Dionysian story in (4) supra). 



(6) Bugonia- Sttperstitions in India.— Once. I communicated 



1 So a rustic version runs : " Since long ago auspicious is the eighth of 

 the fourth moon ; on this day punishment of worms that hate gods is their 

 doom." 



NO. 



1492, VOL. 58] 



