Page - 1181 - in The Complete Aristotle

it the root to swallow. So much, then, for quadrupeds. < div id=“section177” class=“section” title=“27”> 27 Insects, as a general rule, thrive best in the time of year in which they come into being, especially if the season be moist and warm, as in spring. In bee-hives are found creatures that do great damage to the combs; for instance, the grub that spins a web and ruins the honeycomb: it is called the ‘cleros’. It engenders an insect like itself, of a spider-shape, and brings disease into the swarm. There is another insect resembling the moth, called by some the ‘pyraustes’, that flies about a lighted candle: this creature engenders a brood full of a fine down. It is never stung by a bee, and can only be got out of a hive by fumigation. A caterpillar also is engendered in hives, of a species nicknamed the teredo, or ‘borer’, with which creature the bee never interferes. Bees suffer most when flowers are covered with mildew, or in seasons of drought. All insects, without exception, die if they be smeared over with oil; and they die all the more rapidly if you smear their head with the oil and lay them out in the sun. < div id=“section178” class=“section” title=“28”> 28 Variety in animal life may be produced by variety of locality: thus in one place an animal will not be found at all, in another it will be small, or short- lived, or will not thrive. Sometimes this sort of difference is observed in closely adjacent districts. Thus, in the territory of Miletus, in one district cicadas are found while there are none in the district close adjoining; and in Cephalenia there is a river on one side of which the cicada is found and not on the other. In Pordoselene there is a public road one side of which the weasel is found but not on the other. In Boeotia the mole is found in great abundance in the neighbourhood of Orchomenus, but there are none in Lebadia though it is in the immediate vicinity, and if a mole be transported from the one district to the other it will refuse to burrow in the soil. The hare cannot live in Ithaca if introduced there; in fact it will be found dead, turned towards the point of the 1181