67. _Tuci_, which is the name the Spaniards give to cuckoos (_cuculi_), were evidently named from their peculiar cry. These have a time for coming, perched on the shoulders of kites because of their short and weak flights, in order that they may not grow weary and fail in the long spaces of the air. Their saliva produces grasshoppers. [The cuckoo] eats the eggs it finds in the sparrow’s nest, and substitutes its own, which the sparrow receives and sets on and cares for. 79. All kinds of flying things are born twice. For first the eggs are born, then by the heat of the mother’s body they are formed and given life. Chapter 8. On small winged creatures. 1. Bees (_apes_) are so called because they hold to one another by the feet, or it may be because they are born without feet (_pes_). For it is only later on that they get feet and wings. These are skilful in the business of producing honey, they dwell in homes allotted to them, they arrange their dwellings with a skill that makes no mistake, they store the hive from various flowers, and forming their wax-cells, they fill the camp with unnumbered young, and they have an army and kings, they make wars, flee from smoke, and are enraged by noise. 2. A good many have proved by experiment that these spring from the carcasses of cattle. For in order to create them the flesh of slain calves is beaten, in order that worms may be created from the rotten gore, and these afterward turn to bees. In a correct sense bees (_apes_) are so called because they spring from _boves_ as hornets from horses, drones from mules, wasps from asses. BOOKS XIII AND XIV [ON UNIVERSE AND EARTH] INTRODUCTION In books XIII and XIV Isidore gives a complete and systematic account of the material universe, taking up and treating in order the heavens, the atmosphere, water, and earth. His treatment of the last two is especially full and constitutes a geographical description of the earth’s surface as known at his time.[339] [339] _Cf._ Beazley, _The Dawn of Modern Geography_, pp. 366–67. See also p. 53, note. ANALYSIS I. The universe (Bk. XIII, ch. 1). II. Atoms (ch. 2). III. Elements (ch. 3). IV. The heavens (chs. 4–6). 1. The parts of the heavens.[2] 2. The circles of the heavens.[340] V. The air and the clouds (chs. 7–11). 1. Thunder. 2. Lightning. 3. The rainbow and cloud forms. 4. The winds. VI. Waters (chs. 12–22). 1. Springs. 2. The sea. 3. The ocean. 4. The Mediterranean. 5. Bays, etc. 6. Lakes. 7. The abyss. 8. Rivers. VII. The dry land (Bk. XIV, ch. 1). 1. The circle of lands (chs. 2–5). (1) Asia. (2) Europe. (3) Africa. 2. Islands (ch. 6). 3. Promontories (ch. 7). 4. Mountains, etc. (ch. 8). 5. The lower parts of the earth (ch. 9). [340] Repeated with little change from _De Astronomia_. See pp. 145, 146. BOOK XIII