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 Iwnbricus terrestris; and finally, 
the slugs, probably after the definition of Isidore, who has 
characterized the slug as 66 vermis Umax dictiis eo quod in 
limo nascitur , unde et sordidus semper et immundus habetur 
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-scolopendrce. In the seventh chapter, 
are placed the worms which live in cloths. Tn the tenth 
chapter is the gordius, which is named seta , vel vitalis 
aquations , 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-leecli; in xiii. the lumbrici mar ini, 
that is, the sipunculi of Rondelct, 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 Bay, and more 
particularly Linna3us, authors comprised under the term worms, 
13 
