* BY WHICH TME VINE IS INFESTED. 193 
~ Aristophanes, in the comedy of the Clouds, puts these words into the 
mouth of Socrates when speaking to Strepsiades: “ Let go your 
thought, like the Melolontha which is launched into the air with a 
thread around its foot.” The ancient scholiast remarks that this 
Melolontha is an insect of a golden colour, which children hold witha 
thread and cause to fly*. We know that in modern Greece the 
children at the present day attach a thread to the foot of the beauti- 
ful gold-coloured insect which naturalists call the Cetonia fastuosa, 
which is not scarce in that country, where the children amuse them- 
selves with it in the same manner as those of our climates do with the 
common Cockchafer; the name of Melolontha should therefore have 
been applied to the genus Cetonia, not to the genus Chafer. 
An interesting question in archeology here arises, in connexion with 
the exact interpretation of a passage of Pliny, which is well worthy of 
attention. The Roman naturalist, speaking of the different species of 
amulets used in his time to cure the quartan ague, says that three sorts 
of Scarabei are employed for this purpose. “ The first,” he says, “ is 
the Scarabzus which rolls pills, gui pilas volvit, and in consideration 
of which the Scarabzi are placed among the gods by a great part of 
Egypt.” This circumstance enables us to distinguish, without any 
doubt, two or three insects of the family of the Coprophagi, the Ateu- 
chus sacer of Fabricius (Scarabeus sacer of Linnzus), or the Ateu- 
chus laticollis, and the Ateuchus Agyptiorum, brought from Nubia by 
M. Caillaud, and recently described by M. Latreille+, who considers it 
exclusively as the Sacred Scarabzeus so often sculptured by the Egyp- 
tians upon their monuments, and separately in hard stones of various 
kinds. But I think that he is mistaken; for I have recently examined 
all the Scarabzi of Ancient Egypt, sculptured separately, which are 
in the Bibliothéque du Roi, where an individual of the Ateuchus Zigyp- 
tiorum, presented by M. Caillaud, is also preserved, and I am convinced 
that, among the Egyptian stones representing Scarabei with smooth 
elytra, a certain number have been sculptured from the Ateuchus sacer 
of Fabricius, and the others (a smaller number) from the Ateuchus 
laticollis ; but all those stones which have the elytra striated, or with ribs 
and longitudinal furrows, have the Ateuchus Aigyptiorum of M. Cail- 
laud for their type. Thus the name Scarabeus, of the Egyptians, 
is applicable to three different species, closely allied to each other cer- 
tainly, and having probably similar manners and habits, but which, not- 
- withstanding, it is easy to distinguish in the sculptured monuments 
by unequivocal characters}. The Atewchus sacer, which is black, 
* See Camus, Notes upon Aristotle’s Hist. Anim., 4to, vol. ii. p. 478. 
+ Cailland, Voyage a Méroé et au Fleuwve Blanc, p.172, Atlas d’ Hist. Nat. 
et d’ Antiq., pl. 58: Latreille in Cuvier’s Régne Anim., vol. iv. p. 533. 
{ Compare Olivier, Coléopt., vol. i. No. 3. p. 150. No. 183. pl. 8. fig. 59. 
var. B. The pretended var, A. isa different insect; it has a clypeus between 
