Curious Facts in the History of Insects; Including Spiders and Scorpions.: A Complete Collection of the Legends, Superstitions, Beliefs, and Ominous Signs Connected with Insects; Together with Their Uses in Medicine, Art, and as Food; and a Summary of Their Remarkable Injuries and Appearances.Cowan, Frank
History
Curious Facts in the History of Insects; Including Spiders and Scorpions.: A Complete Collection of the Legends, Superstitions, Beliefs, and Ominous Signs Connected with Insects; Together with Their Uses in Medicine, Art, and as Food; and a Summary of Their Remarkable Injuries and Appearances.
Cowan, Frank
Insects
We find also in a work bearing the title “Apologie pour les Grands
Homines Accusés de Magie,” that “Jean de Montroyal presented to the
Emperor Charles V. an iron Fly, which made a solemn circuit round its
inventor’s head, and then reposed from its fatigue on his
arm.”--Probably the same automaton, since Regiomontanus and Montroyal
are the same.
Such a Fly as the above is rather extraordinary, yet I have something
better to tell--still about a Fly.
Gervais, Chancellor to the Emperor Otho III., in his book entitled “Otia
Imperatoris,” informs us that “the sage Virgilius, Bishop of Naples,
made a brass Fly, which he placed on one of the city gates, and that
this mechanical Fly, trained like a shepherd’s dog, prevented any other
fly entering Naples; so much so, that during eight years the meat
exposed for sale in the market was never once tainted!”[1001]
“Varro affirmeth,” says Pliny, “that the heads of Flies applied fresh to
the bald place, is a convenient medicine for the said infirmity and
defect. Some use in this case the bloud of flies: others mingle their
ashes with the ashes of paper used in old time, or els of nuts; with
this proportion, that there be a third part only of the ashes of flies
to the rest, and herewith for ten days together rubb the bare places
where the hair is gone. Some there be againe, who temper and incorporat
togither the said ashes of Flies with the juice of colewort and
brest-milke: others take nothing thereto but honey.”[1002]
Mucianus, who was thrice consul, carried about him a living Fly, says
Pliny, wrapped in a piece of white linen, and strongly asserted that to
the use of this expedient he owed his preservation from
ophthalmia.[1003]
Ferdinand Mendez Pinto says: “In our travels with the ambassador of the
King of Bramaa to the Calaminham, we saw in a grot men of a sect of one
of their Saints, named Angemacur: these lived in deep holes, made in the
mider of the rock, according to the rule of their wretched order, eating
nothing but Flies, Ants, Scorpions, and Spiders, with the juice of a
certain herb, much like to sorrel.”[1004]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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