BULLETIN 



OF THE 



BROOKLYN ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



Vol. VIII December, 1912 No. 2 



Some Ancient Beliefs Concerning Insects. 



By Harry B. Weiss, New Brunswick, N. J. 



Few things are more interesting than the beHefs of the ancients 

 concerning insects, and in this day of research and experimenta- 

 tion one is inclined to wonder how it was possible for such theories 

 ever to be held. 



As to the eggs of the house mosquito, Culex pipiens, the 

 female after having laid the proper number on the surface of 

 the water surrounded them with a kind of "unctuous" matter 

 which kept them from sinking immediately, and then fastened 

 them with a thread to the bottom of the pool. This prevented 

 them from floating at the mercy of every breeze, — from a suitable 

 place to one less suitable. As they came to maturity they sank 

 deeper and deeper and upon reaching the bottom, hatched into 

 larvae. This description is credited to Langallo, who mentioned 

 it in a letter to Redi, printed at Florence in 1679. Of course 

 the impossibility of a mosquito spinning a thread and plunging 

 under water with it, was evidently not thought of. 



Honey-dew was described by Dr. Good as "a peculiar haze 

 or mist loaded with a poisonous miasm that stimulates the leaves 

 to a morbid secretion of saccharine and viscid juice, " and another 

 writer accounted for it by electric changes in the air. It is evi- 

 dent from this that our ancient friends were not careful observers 

 in some cases. 



Coming to galls, the physiology of which is not understood 

 even at the present day, Reaumur gives the following remarkable 

 explanation: "After the female has pierced the part of the plant 

 which she selects, she ejects into the cavity a drop of her corrod- 

 ing liquor and immediately lays an egg or more there; the cir- 

 culation of the sap being thus interrupted and thrown by the 

 poison into a state of fermentation, that bums the contiguous 



