42 SUPPLEMENT , 



and separate, and gives us less, perhaps, about them under 

 the head vermis, than under that of scolopendra. 



Aldrovandus, and his abridger, not having followed the al- 

 phabetical order, like Gesner, were necessarily forced to unite 

 all these animals in a sort of class or group, under the com- 

 mon name of vermes. But it is remarkable enough that they 

 did not comprehend among them any of the chetopoda, but 

 merely the worms which live in the body of man, or that of 

 other animals ; those which live in plants, in the earth, as the 

 earth-worm, which they call lumbricus terrestris ; and finally, 

 the slugs, probably after the definition of Isidore, who has 

 characterized the slug as " vermis Umax dictus eo quod in 

 limo nascitur, unde et sordidus semper et immundus hahetur^'' 

 an etymology which had already been given by Varro. 



The Chetopoda are, however, mentioned in the seventh 

 book of those writers, when they speak of aquatic insects. 

 In the sixth chapter, the nereides are comprised again 

 under the name of sea-scolopendroB. In the seventh chapter, 

 are placed the worms which live in cloths. In the tenth 

 chapter is the gordius, which is named seta, vel vitalis 

 aquaticus, and which has been called gordius from the 

 habit of twisting itself up like the Gordian knot. The 

 Ololygon of Theon appears to be the same animal. It is, he 

 says, a palustral animal, simple, slender, oblong, indistinct, 

 similar to a lumbricus, but thinner. In chapters xi. and xii. 

 are the sea and land-leech; in xiii. the lumhrici marini, 

 that is, the sipunculi of Rondelet, and the arenicola of Belon. 

 In X. the hippocampus, a species of fish. In xviii. the 

 asterice, which were then considered insects, according to the 

 rigorous definition of the term insecta. 



After this time, during almost the whole period, which pre- 

 ceded the regeneration of natural science, until Ray, and more 

 particularly Linnaeus, authors comprised under the term worms, 

 13 



