“Now, then, it followeth that we inquire about the manner of their (Scorpions’) breed or generation, which I find to be double, as divers authors have observed, one way is by putrefaction, and the other by laying of egges, and both these ways are consonant to nature, for Lacinius writeth that some creatures are generated only by propagation of seed--such are men, vipers, whales, and the palm-tree; some again only by putrefaction, as mice, Scorpions, Emmets, Spiders, purslain, which, first of all, were produced by putrefaction, and since their generation are conserved by the seed and egges of their own kinde. Now, therefore, we will first of all speak of the generation of Scorpions by putrefaction, and afterward by propagation. “Pliny saith[1085] that when Sea-crabs dye, and their bodies are dried upon the earth, when the sun entereth into Cancer and Scorpius, out of the putrefaction thereof ariseth a Scorpion; and so out of the putrefied body of the crefish burned arise Scorpions, which caused Ovid thus to write: Concava littoreo si demas brachia cancro, Cætera supponas terræ, de parte sepulta Scorpius exibit, caudaque minabitur unca. And again: Obrutus exemptis cancer tellure lacertis, Scorpius exiguo tempore factus erit. In English thus: If that the arms you take from Sea-crab-fish, And put the rest in earth till all consumed be, Out of the buried part a Scorpion will arise, With hooked tayl doth threaten for to hurt thee. “And therefore it is reported by Ælianus that about Estamenus, in India, there are abundance of Scorpions generated only by corrupt rain-water standing in that place. Also out of the Basalisk beaten into pieces and so putrefied are Scorpions engendered. And when as one had planted the herb basilica on a wall, in the room or place thereof he found two Scorpions. And some say that if a man chaw in his mouth fasting this herb basill before he wash, and afterward lay the same abroad uncovered where no sun cometh at it for the space of seven nights, taking it in all the daytime, he shall at length finde it transmuted into a Scorpion, with a tayl of seven knots.[1086] “Hollerius,[1087] to take away all scruple of this thing, writeth that in Italy in his dayes there was a man that had a Scorpion bred in his brain by continuall smelling to this herb basill; and Gesner, by relation of an apothecary in France, writeth likewise a story of a young maid who, by smelling to basill, fell into an exceeding headache, whereof she died without cure, and after death, being opened, there were found little Scorpions in her brain.