192 BARON WALCKENAER ON THE INSECTS 
greater number of insects come from a worm (scolex): ‘ the whole 
worm grows larger,” he says, “ and becomes an articulated animal*.” 
Aristotle has well observed that the Spiders, Grasshoppers, and 
Crickets are not produced from worms, but from animals similar to 
themselves. These ideas upon the metamorphosis of insects are very 
exact, and though Aristotle blends with them a few errors, which it is 
unnecessary to consider here, they afford proof of the perseverance with 
which he pursued his observations, and the surprising skill which 
he possessed for generalizing acquired facts, and for discovering and 
predicting those not previously observed. 
It must not be forgotten that it is in relation to the manner in which 
coition is effected in insects that Aristotle names the Spondyle; and the 
Chafer is precisely one of those insects which present themselves most 
frequently to our notice in coition. 
From the text of Pliny and the assertion of Agricola, it appears that 
among the Latins, and the Greeks of the Lower Empire the name of 
Spondyle has been retained to denote the larva of the large species 
of Chafer, with the metamorphosis of which they were unacquainted. 
That an insect so common as the Chafer, and which acts a part so 
important to agriculture by the mischief which it occasions, even in the 
state of a perfect insect, to the leaves of plants and trees, was known to 
the Latins as well as to the Greeks, cannot be doubted; but we are 
ignorant whether they gave it a particular name, or whether they in- 
cluded it under the general names of Scarabeus and Cantharis, so often 
employed by them to denote all kinds of Coleoptera. 
Fabricius, who has detached the Chafers from the genus Scara- 
beus of Linneus, has given to this genus the name of Melolontha, 
which the Swedish naturalist had assigned as the specific name of the 
most common species. This name is borrowed from Aristotle, who 
employs it in the same manner as those of Cantharis and Carabus, to 
denote various species of Scarabei, which in our natural systems be- 
long to very different families or to very dissimilar genera. It was 
from the opinion of the learned of the time of Aldrovandus+, and 
adopted by Bochart{, that Linnzeus made the Melolontha of Aristotle 
our common Cockchafer; but, as Latreille has well observed §, from a 
comparison of the texts of Suidas, Pollux, and the scholiast on Aristo- 
phanes, it appears that the name Melolontha was given, among the 
Greeks, to insects of brilliant colours, a description which does not 
apply to the common Cockchafer. 
* Aristotle, book v. chap. 19. vol. i. pp. 286 and 287 ; book i. chap. 4. No. I. 
and books v., xii., and xvii. of Schneider’s edition, Svo, 1811, vol. ii. chap. 17. 
(vulgo 19. Scaliger 18), vol. ii. p. 207. 
+ Aldrovandus, De Animalibus Insectis, p. 17. 
+ Bochart, Hierozoicon, part ii. book iv. chap. 2. 
§ See Latreille’s Memoir upon the Insects painted or sculptured upon the 
ancient Monuments of Egypt, in the Mémoires sur divers Sujets, 8vo. 
a 
