38 SUPPLEMENT , 



The names of worms, — o-kwXt/^, evAm, aXfiivQ, in Greek, and 

 vermes in Latin, — were employed by the ancients to designate 

 certain animals, which to a certain degree they suited ; with 

 much more reference, however, to the elongated form of their 

 body than to the softness of their composition. But, as we have 

 seen,the Greeks had three words for these beings, each of which 

 had its peculiar signification. From what Aristotle tells us 

 of his scolex, — a word, the root of which is indubitably scolios, 

 which means tortuous, — it is evident that it applied to all the 

 animals which exhibited the form of the common worm, or 

 rather, perhaps, whose movements were tortuous, whatever 

 might be the nature of the change which they were subse- 

 quently to undergo. It would seem, however, that it was 

 more especially applied to the first degree of development in 

 insects, to the state in which they appear on issuing from the 

 egg of the pai'ent. Aristotle certainly extends its application 

 no further than to insects. 



Such, however, is not the case with .-Elian : in two places of 

 his work on the nature of animals, where this expression 

 occurs, he evidently intends the lumbrici ; in a third, it is 

 probable that he alludes to the caterpillar of the cabbage- 

 butterfly ; and in a fourth, he thus designates, after Ctesias, 

 some fabulous animal, although he states it to belong to the 

 genus of those which are nourished and engendered in wood. 



Athenaeus employs the word Scolezia to designate the small 

 worms which live in the vulva of the she-mule. 



The term Eulai appears to have been also employed to 

 designate the form under which some insects exist, for a 

 greater or less period of time, since we find it applied to ani- 

 mals which inhabit putrid flesh, and also wounds and ulcers. 

 Its extension, therefore, was not very great. iElian likewise 

 employs it to designate what in all probability was a larva, 

 when he tells us that in India the peasants remove the land 



