And indeed their more than ordinary swiftnesse and their eagernesse in fight, are sufficient arguments that they can take their original from no other creature (much less from an asse, hart, or oxe) since that Nature never granted to any creatures else, to excel both in swiftness and valour. And surely that I may give another sense of that proverb of Aristotle, Hail the daughters of the wing-footed steed: this would I suppose fit to be spoken in way of jest and scorn to scolding women, which do imitate the hastiness and froward disposition of the Wasp. Other sorts of them are produced out of the putrid corps of the Crocodiles, if Horus and the Ægyptians be to be believed, for which reason when they mean a Wasp, they set it forth by an horse or crocodile. Nicander gives them the name _lukosnoadon_, because they sometimes come from the dead carkasses of wolves. Bellenacensis and Vicentius say, that Wasps come out of the putrefaction of an old deer’s head, flying sometimes out of the eyes, sometimes out of the nostrils.... There are those also that affirm that Wasps are begotten of the earth and rottenness of some kind of fruits, as Albertus and the Arabick scholiast.” Of the Hornet, likewise, these writers tell the following fabulous stories: “The Latins call the Hornets _Crabrones_, perchance from the village Crabra in the countrey of Tusculum (where there are great store of them), or from the word _Caballus_, _i.e._ a horse, who is said to be their father. According to that of Ovid, _Met._ 15: The warlike horse if buried under ground, Shortly a brood of Hornets will be found. Albertus calls it a yellow Bee. Cardanus will needs have them to arise from the dead mule. Plutarch, in the life of Cleomedes, saith they come out of horse flesh, as the Bees do out of the oxe his paunch. Virgil saith they are produced of the asse.... I conceive that those are produced of the harder flesh of the horse, and the Wasps of the more tender flesh.”[590] The Hornet (but whether or not it was the common species, _Vespa crabro_, Linn., is uncertain), we learn from Scriptures was employed by Providence to drive out the impious inhabitants of Canaan, and subdue them under the hand of the Israelites.--“And I sent the Hornet before you, which drave them out before you, even the two kings of the Amorites.”[591]