Natural Hiftory of the Ancients. 1 7 



words, we fhould not know that oyfters were a 

 dainty fo early as the Siege of Troy. 



The zoology of the Homeric poems may be 

 completed by a glance at the infedts, etc., which 

 are named by the poet. The "glancing gadfly" 

 attacks the herds. One kind of worm or weevil 

 attacks the wood of OdyfTeus's bow ; another eats 

 corpfes. Locufts are reprefented fleeing from fire. 

 Flies are often mentioned. A little one per- 

 fiftently attacks a big man, in one paflage ; in 

 another, flies hum round the milk-pails in fummer, 

 or round the fhepherd's pen. A beautiful fimile 

 reprefents Athene caufing an arrow to fly off from 

 Menelaus " as a mother drives off a fly from her 

 child when enjoying a fweet fleep." Still more 

 celebrated is the paffage which introduces the 

 favourite Greek infect, the chirping tettix ; the 

 old men of Troy are no longer able to fight, but 

 are "excellent talkers, like tettixes" (graflhoppers), 

 " which, in the thickets, fitting on a tree, fend 

 forth a thin clear voice." 1 Spiders even had been 

 noticed by Homer, and were not deemed by him, 

 any more than Shakefpeare deems the toad, un- 

 worthy the dignity of poetry. The fetters which 

 Hephasftus conftrucfted in order to enfnare his 

 erring wife were fine, yet ftrong as fpider's web. 2 

 Round the neglected bed of Odyffeus were foul 

 fpider-webs. Bees are mentioned as nefting in a 

 hollow rock, not a beehive another evidence of 

 the antiquity of thefe poems. Evidently bees 

 had not yet been domefticated. They made their 



1 " Iliad," iii. 151. 2 " Odyfiey," viii. 280; xvi. 35. 



c 



