The Politics of Aristotle

by Aristotle

  And of insects some are derived from congeners, as the venom-spider and the common-spider from the venom-spider and the common-spider, and so with the locust, the grasshopper, and the cicada. Other insects are not derived from living parentage, but are generated spontaneously: some out of dew falling on leaves, by [551a1] nature in spring-time, but not seldom in winter too when there has been a stretch of fair weather and southerly winds; others grow in decaying mud or dung; others in timber, green or dry; some in the hair of animals; some in the flesh of animals; some [5] in excrements: and some from excrement after it has been voided, and some from excrement yet within the living animal, like the intestinal worms. And of these worms there are three species: one named the flat-worm, another the round worm, and the third the ascarid. These intestinal worms do not in any case propagate their [10] kind. The flat-worm, however, in an exceptional way, clings fast to the gut, and lays a thing like a melon-seed, by observing which indication the physician concludes that his patient is troubled with the worm.

  The butterfly is generated from caterpillars which grow on green leaves, chiefly leaves of the raphanus, which some call cabbage. At first it is less than a [15] grain of millet; it then grows into a small grub; and in three days it is a tiny caterpillar. After this it grows on and on, and becomes quiescent and changes its shape, and is now called a chrysalis. The outer shell is hard, and the chrysalis moves if you touch it. It attaches itself by cobweb-like filaments, and is unfurnished with [20] mouth or any other apparent organ. After a little while the outer covering bursts asunder, and out flies the winged creature that we call the butterfly. At first, when [25] it is a caterpillar, it feeds and ejects excrement; but when it turns into the chrysalis it neither feeds nor ejects excrement.

  The same remarks are applicable to all such insects as are developed out of the grub, both such grubs as are derived from the copulation of living animals and such as are generated without copulation. For the grub of the bee, the hornet, and the [551b1] wasp, whilst it is young, takes food and is seen to produce excrement; but when it has passed from the grub shape to its defined form and become what is termed a pupa, it ceases to take food and to void excrement, and remains tightly wrapped up and motionless until it has reached its full size, when it breaks the formation with [5] which the cell is closed, and issues forth. The insects named the hypera and the penia are derived from similar caterpillars, which move in an undulatory way, progressing with one part and then pulling up the hinder parts by a bend of the body. The developed insect in each case takes its peculiar colour from the caterpillar.

  [10] From one particular large grub, which has as it were horns, and in other respects differs from grubs in general, there comes, by a metamorphosis of the grub, first a caterpillar, then the cocoon, then the necydalus; and the creature passes through all these transformations within six months. A class of women unwind and [15] reel off the cocoons of these creatures,20 and afterwards weave a fabric; a Coan woman of the name of Pamphila, daughter of Plateus, being credited with the first invention of the fabric. After the same fashion the stag-beetle comes from grubs that live in dry wood: at first the grub is motionless, but after a while the shell bursts and the stag-beetle issues forth.

  [20] From grubs on the beet comes the leekbane;21 this creature is also winged. From the flat animalcule that skims over the surface of rivers comes the gadfly; and this accounts for the fact that gadflies most abound in the neighbourhood of waters on whose surface these animalcules are observed. From a certain small, black and [25] hairy caterpillar comes first a wingless glow-worm; and this creature again suffers a metamorphosis, and transforms into a winged insect named the ‘curl.’

  Gnats grow from ascarids; and ascarids are engendered in the slime of wells, or in places where water containing an earthy deposit collects. This slime decays, and [552a1] first turns white, then black, and finally blood-red; and at this stage there originate in it, as it were, little tiny bits of red weed, which at first wriggle about all clinging together, and finally break loose and swim in the water, and are hereupon known as [5] ascarids. After a few days they stand straight up on the water motionless and hard, and by and by the husk breaks off and the gnats are seen sitting upon it, until the sun’s heat or a puff of wind sets them in motion, when they fly away.

  With all grubs and all animals that break out from the grub state, movement is [10] due primarily to the heat of the sun or to wind.

  Ascarids are more likely to be found, and grow with unusual rapidity, in places where there is a deposit of a mixed and heterogeneous kind, as in kitchens and in ploughed fields; for the contents of such places are disposed to rapid putrefaction. In autumn, also, owing to the drying up of moisture, they grow in unusual numbers.

  The tick is generated from couch-grass. The cockchafer comes from a grub [15] that is generated in the dung of the cow or the ass. The dung-beetle rolls a piece of dung into a ball, lies hidden within it during the winter, and gives birth therein to small grubs, from which grubs come new dung-beetles. Certain winged insects also come from the grubs that are found in pulse, in the same fashion as in the cases [20] described.

  Flies grow from grubs in the dung that farmers have gathered up into heaps; for those who are engaged in this work assiduously gather the remainder which has been mixed together, and this they term ‘working-up’ the manure. The grub is exceedingly minute to begin with; first—even at this stage—it assumes a reddish [25] colour, and then from a quiescent state it takes on the power of motion, as though born to it; it then becomes a small motionless grub; it then moves again, and again relapses into immobility; it then comes out a perfect fly, and moves away under the influence of the sun’s heat or of a puff of air. The horse-fly is engendered in timber. [30] The budbane comes from a transformed grub; and this grub is engendered in cabbage-stalks. The cantharis comes from the caterpillars that are found on fig-trees or pear-trees or fir-trees—for on all these grubs are engendered—and also [552b1] from caterpillars found on the dog-rose; and the cantharis takes eagerly to ill-scented substances, from the fact of its having been engendered in ill-scented woods. The conops comes from a grub that is engendered in the slime of vinegar. [5]

  And living animals are produced in substances that are usually supposed to be incapable of putrefaction; for instance, grubs are found in long-lying snow; and snow of this description gets reddish in colour, and hence the grub that is engendered in it is red and hairy. The grubs found in the snows of Media are large and white; and all such grubs are little disposed to motion. In Cyprus, in places where copper-ore is smelted, with heaps of the ore piled on day after day, an animal [10] is engendered in the fire, somewhat larger than a large fly, furnished with wings, which can hop or crawl through the fire. And the grubs and these latter animals perish when you keep the one away from the fire and the other from the snow. Now the salamander is a clear case in point, to show us that animals do actually exist that fire cannot destroy; for this creature, so the story goes, not only walks through the [15] fire but puts it out in doing so.

  On the river Hypanis in the Cimmerian Bosphorus, about the time of the summer solstice, there are brought down towards the sea by the stream what look like little sacks rather bigger than grapes, out of which at their bursting issues a [20] winged quadruped. The insect lives and flies about until the evening, but as the sun goes down it pines away, and dies at sunset having lived just one day, from which circumstance it is called the ephemeron.

  As a rule, insects that come from caterpillars and grubs are held at first by cobwebs.22

  Such is the mode of generation of the insects above enumerated. [25]

  20 · The wasps called ichneumons, less in size than the ordinary wasp, kill spiders and carry off the dead bodies to a wall or some such place with a hole in it; this hole they smear over with mud and lay their grubs inside it, and from the grubs come the hunter-wasps. Some of the coleoptera and of the small and nameless [553a1] insects make small holes of mud on a wall or on a grave-stone,
and there deposit their grubs.

  With insects, as a general rule, the time of generation from its commencement to its completion comprises three or four weeks. With grubs and grub-like creatures [5] the time is usually three weeks, and in the oviparous insects as a rule four. But, in the case of oviparous insects, the egg-formation comes at the close of seven days from copulation, and during the remaining three weeks the parent broods over and hatches its young; i.e. where this is the result of copulation, as in the case of the spider and its congeners. As a rule, the transformations take place in intervals of [10] three or four days, corresponding to the lengths of interval at which the crises recur in fevers.

  So much for the generation of insects. Their death is due to the shrivelling of their organs, just as the larger animals die of old age. Winged insects die in autumn [15] from the shrinking of their wings. The horse-fly dies from dropsy in the eyes.23

  21 · With regard to the generation of bees different hypotheses are in vogue. Some affirm that bees neither copulate nor give birth to young, but that they fetch their young. And some say that they fetch their young from the flower of the [20] callyntrum; others assert that they bring them from the flower of the reed, others, from the flower of the olive. And it is stated as a proof that, when the olive harvest is most abundant, the swarms are most numerous. Others declare that they fetch the brood of the drones from one of the stuffs above mentioned, but that the working [25] bees are engendered by the rulers of the hive.

  Now of these rulers there are two kinds: the better kind is red in colour, the other is black and variegated; the ruler is double the size of the working bee. These rulers have the part below the waist half as large again, and they are called by some [30] the ‘mothers’, from an idea that they generate the bees; and, as a proof they declare that the brood of the drones appears even when there is no ruler-bee in the hive, but that the bees do not appear in their absence. Others, again, assert that these insects [553b1] copulate, and that the drones are male and the bees female.

  The ordinary bee is generated in the cells of the comb, but the ruler-bees in cells down below attached to the comb, suspended from it, apart from the rest, six or seven in number, and growing in a way quite different from the mode of growth of the ordinary brood.

  [5] Bees are provided with a sting, but the drones are not so provided. The rulers are provided with stings, but they never use them; and this latter circumstance will account for the belief of some people that they have no stings at all.

  22 · Of bees there are various species. The best kind is a little round mottled insect; another is long, and resembles the hornet; a third is black and flat-bellied, [10] and is nicknamed the ‘robber’; a fourth kind is the drone, the largest of all, but stingless and inactive. And that is why some bee-masters place a net-work in front of the hives to keep the big drones out while it lets the bees go in.

  Of the rulers there are, as has been stated, two kinds. In every hive there are more rulers than one; and a hive goes to ruin if there be too few rulers, not because [15] of anarchy thereby ensuing, but, as we are told, because these creatures contribute in some way to the generation of the bees. A hive will go also to ruin if there be too large a number of rulers in it; for they divide into factions.

  Whenever the spring-time is late coming, and when there is drought and [20] mildew, then the progeny of the hive is small in number. But when the weather is dry they attend to the honey, and in rainy weather their attention is concentrated on the brood; and this will account for the coincidence of rich olive-harvests and abundant swarms.

  The bees first work at the honeycomb, and then put the pupae in it: by the mouth, say those who hold the theory of their bringing them from elsewhere.24 After [25] putting in the pupae they put in the honey for subsistence, and this they do in the summer and autumn; and the autumn honey is the better of the two.

  The honeycomb is made from flowers, and the materials for the wax they gather from the resinous gum of trees, while honey is what falls from the air, and is deposited chiefly at the risings of the constellations or when a rainbow is in the sky; [30] and as a general rule there is no honey before the rising of the Pleiads. [The bee, then, makes the wax from flowers. The honey, however, it does not make, but merely gathers what is deposited out of the atmosphere; and as a proof of this statement we have the known fact that bee-keepers find the hives filled with honey [554a1] within the space of one or two days. Furthermore, in autumn flowers are found, but honey, if it be withdrawn, is not replaced; now, after the withdrawal of the original honey, when no food or very little is in the hives, there would be a fresh stock of honey, if the bees made it from flowers.]25 Honey, if allowed to mature, gathers [5] consistency; for at first it is like water and remains liquid for several days. If it be drawn off during these days it has no consistency; but it attains consistency in about twenty days. The taste of thyme-honey is discernible at once, from its peculiar [10] sweetness and consistency.

  The bee gathers from every flower that is furnished with a calyx, and from all other flowers that are sweet-tasted, without doing injury to any fruit; and the juices of the flowers it takes up with the organ that resembles a tongue and carries off to the hive.

  Honey is taken from the hives on the appearance of the wild fig. They produce [15] the best larvae at the time the honey is making. The bee carries wax and bees’ bread round its legs, but vomits the honey into the cell. After depositing its young, it broods over it like a bird. The grub when it is small lies slantwise in the comb, but by [20] and by rises up straight by an effort of its own and takes food, and holds on so tightly to the honeycomb as actually to be squeezed against it.

  The young of bees and of drones is white, and from the young come the grubs; and the grubs grow into bees and drones. The egg of the ruler is reddish in colour, [25] and its substance is about as consistent as thick honey; and from the first it is about as big as the bee that is produced from it. From the young of the ruler there is no intermediate stage, it is said, of the grub, but the bee comes at once.

  Whenever the bee lays an egg in the comb there is always a drop of honey set against it. The larva of the bee gets feet and wings as soon as the cell has been stopped up with wax, and when it arrives at its completed form it breaks its [554b1] membrane and flies away. It ejects excrement in the grub state, but not afterwards; that is, not until it has got out of the encasing membrane, as we have already described. If you remove the heads from off the larvae before the coming of the wings, the bees will eat them up; and if you nip off the wings from a drone and let it [5] go, the bees will bite off the wings from all the remaining drones.

  The bee lives for six years as a rule, as an exception for seven years. If a swarm lasts for nine years, or ten, it is considered to have done well.

  In Pontus are found bees exceedingly white in colour, and these bees produce their honey twice a month. (The bees in Themiscyra, on the banks of the river [10] Thermodon, build honeycombs in the ground and in hives, and these honeycombs are furnished with very little wax but with honey of great consistency; and the honeycomb is smooth and level.) But this is not always the case with these bees, but only in the winter season; for in Pontus the ivy is abundant, and it flowers at this time of the year, and it is from the ivy-flower that they derive their honey. A white [15] and very consistent honey is brought down to Amisus, which is deposited by bees on trees without the employment of honeycombs; and this kind of honey is produced in other districts in Pontus.

  There are bees also that construct triple honeycombs in the ground; and these honeycombs supply honey but never contain grubs. But the honeycombs in these [20] places are not all of this sort, nor do all the bees construct them.

  23 · Anthrenae and wasps construct combs for their young. When they have no ruler, but are wandering about in search of one, the anthrene constructs its comb on some high place, and the wasp inside a hole. When the anthrene and the wasp [25] have a ruler, they construct their combs underground. Their combs ar
e in all cases hexagonal like the comb of the bee. They are composed, however, not of wax, but of a bark-like webbed fibre, and the comb of the anthrene is much neater than the comb of the wasp. Like the bee, they put their young just like a drop of liquid on to [555a1] the side of the cell, and the egg clings to the wall of the cell. But eggs are not deposited in all the cells simultaneously; on the contrary, in some cells are creatures big enough to fly, in others are nymphae, and in others are mere grubs. As in the [5] case of bees, excrement is observed only in the cells where the grubs are found. As long as the creatures are in the nymph condition they are motionless, and the cell is cemented over. In the comb of the anthrene there is found in the cell of the young a drop of honey in front of it. The larvae of the anthrene and the wasp make their appearance not in the spring but in the autumn; and their growth is especially discernible in times of full moon. And the eggs and the grubs never rest at the [10] bottom of the cells, but always cling on to the side wall.

  24 · There is a kind of humble-bee that builds a pointed nest of clay against a stone or in some similar situation, besmearing the clay with something like spittle. And this is exceedingly thick and hard; in point of fact, one can hardly break it open [15] with a spike. Here the insects lay their eggs, and white grubs are produced wrapped in a black membrane. Apart from the membrane there is found some wax in the honeycomb; and this wax is much yellower than that of the bee.

  25 · Ants copulate and engender grubs; and these grubs do not attach [20] themselves to anything, but grow on and on from small and rounded shapes until they become elongated and defined in shape: and they are engendered in springtime.

  26 · The land-scorpion also lays a number of egg-shaped grubs, and broods over them. When the hatching is completed, the parent animal, as happens with the parent spider, is ejected and put to death by the young ones; for very often the young [25] ones are about eleven in number.