Ruines the crocodil in nature’s life extinct.”[1088]
The remarks referred to by Topsel in the last paragraph in his history
of the Crocodile are as follows:
“It is said by Philes that, after the egge is laid by the crocodile,
many times there is a cruel Stinging Scorpion which cometh out thereof,
and woundeth the crocodile that laid it.[1089]
“The Scorpion also and the crocodile are enemies one to the other, and
therefore when the Egyptians will describe the combat of two notable
enemies, they paint a crocodile and a Scorpion fighting together, for
ever one of them killeth another; but if they will decipher a speedy
overthrow to one’s enemy, then they picture a crocodile; if a slow and
slack victory, they picture a Scorpion.”[1090]
“Some maintain,” says Moufet, “that they (Scorpions) are not bred by
copulation, but by exceeding heat of the sun. Ælian, _lib. 6_, _de Anim.
cap. 22_, among whom Galen must first be blamed, who in his Book _de
fœt. form._ will not have nature, but chance to be the parent of
Scorpions, Flies, Spiders, Worms of all sorts, and he ascribes their
beginning to the uncertain constitutions of the heavens, place, matter,
heat, etc.”[1091]
Topsel further says: “The principall of all other subjects of their (the
Scorpions’) hatred are virgins and women, whom they do not only desire
to harm, but also when they have harmed are never perfectly recovered.
(Albertus)....
“The lion is by the Scorpion put to flight wheresoever he seeith it, for
he feareth it as the enemy of his life, and therefore writeth S.
Ambrose, _Exiguo Scorpionis aculeo exagitatur leo_, the lion is much
moved at the small sting of a Scorpion.”[1092]
Naude tells us that there is a species of Scorpions in Italy, which are
so domesticated as to be put between sheets to cool the beds during the
heat of summer.[1093] Pliny mentions that the Scorpions of Italy are
harmless.[1094]
Among the curious things recorded by Pliny concerning the Scorpion, the
following have been selected: Some writers, he says, are of opinion that
the Scorpion devours its offspring, and that the one among the young
which is the most adroit avails itself of its sole mode of escape by
placing itself on the back of the mother, and thus finding a place where
it is in safety from the tail and the sting. The one that thus escapes,
they say, becomes the avenger of the rest, and at last, taking
advantage of its elevated position, puts its parent to death.[1095]
According to Pliny, those who carry the plant “tricoccum,” or, as it is
also called, “scorpiuron,”[1096] about their person are never stung by a
Scorpion, and it is said, he continues, that if a circle is traced on
the ground around a Scorpion with a sprig of this plant, the animal will
never move out of it, and that if a Scorpion is covered with it, or even
sprinkled with the water in which it has been steeped, it will die that
instant.[1097]
Attalus assures us, says Pliny, that if a person, the moment he sees a
Scorpion, says “Duo,”[1098] the reptile will stop short and forbear to
sting.[1099]
Concerning Scorpions, Diophanes, contemporary with Cæsar and Cicero, has
collected the following several opinions of the more ancient writers: If
you take a Scorpion, he says, and burn it, the others will betake
themselves to flight: and if a person carefully rubs his hands with the
juice of radish, he may without fear and danger take hold of Scorpions,
and of other reptiles: and radishes laid on Scorpions instantly destroy
them. You will also cure the bite of a Scorpion, by applying a silver
ring to the place. A suffumigation of sandarach[1100] with galbanum, or
goat’s fat, will drive away Scorpions and every other reptile. If a
person will also boil a Scorpion in oil, and will rub the place bit by a
Scorpion, he will stop the pain.[1101] But Apuleius says, that if a
person bit by a Scorpion sits on an ass, turned toward its tail, that
the ass suffers the pain, and that it is destroyed.[1102] Democritus
says that a person bit by a Scorpion, who instantly says to his ass, “A
Scorpion has bit me,” will suffer no pain, but it passes to the
ass.[1103] The newt has an antipathy to the Scorpion: if a person,
therefore, melts a newt in oil, and applies the oil to the person that
is bitten, he frees him from pain. The same author also says that the
root of a rose-tree being applied, cures persons bit by Scorpions.
Plutarch recommends to fasten small nuts to the feet of the bed, that
Scorpions may not approach it. Zoroaster says that lettuce-seed, being
drunk with wine, cures persons bit by Scorpions. Florentinus says, if
one applies the juice of the fig to the wound of a person just bitten,
that the poison will proceed no farther; or, if the person bit eat
squill, he will not be hurt, but he will say that the squill is pleasant
to his palate. Tarentinus also says that a person holding the herb
sideritis may take hold of Scorpions, and not be hurt by them.[1104]
Dioscorides, among many other remedies for the sting of the Scorpion,
prescribes “a fish called _Lacerta_, salted and cut in pieces; the
barbel fish cut in two; the flesh of a fish called _Smaris_; house-mice
cut asunder; horse or ass dung; the shell of an Indian small nut; ram’s
flesh burnt; mummie, four grains, with butter and cow’s milk; a broiled
Scorpion eaten; river-crabs raw and bruised, and drank with asses’ milk:
locusts broiled and eaten,” etc. Rabby Moyses prescribes pigeon’s dung
dried; Constantinus, hens’ dung, or the heart applied outwardly;
Anatolius, crows’ dung; Averrhois, the bezoar-stone; Monus, silver;
Silvaticus, from Serapis, pewter; and Orpheus, coral.
“Quintus Serenus writes thus, and adviseth:
These are small things, but yet their wounds are great,
And in pure bodies lurking do most harm,
For when our senses inward do retreat,
And men are fast asleep, they need some charm,
The Spider and the cruel Scorpion
Are wont to sting, witnesse great Orion,
Slayn by a Scorpion, for poysons small
Have mighty force, and therefore presently
Lay on a Scorpion bruised, to recall
The venome, or sea-water to apply
Is held full good, such virtue is in brine,
And ’tis approved to drink your fill of wine.
“And Macer writes of houseleek thus:
Men say that houseleek hath so soveraign a might,
Who carries but that, no Scorpion can him bite.”[1105]
The natives of South Africa, when bitten by a Scorpion, apply, as a
remedy, a living frog to the wound, into which animal it is supposed the
poison is transferred from the wound, and it dies; then they apply
another, which dies also: the third perhaps only becomes sickly, and the
fourth no way affected. When this is observed, the poison is considered
to be extracted, and the patient cured. Another method is to apply a
kidney, scarlet, or other bean, which swells; then apply another and
another, till the bean ceases to be affected, when they consider the
poison extracted.[1106]
There is a vast desert tract, says Pliny, on this side of the Ethiopian
Cynamolgi--the “dog-milkers”--the inhabitants of which were exterminated
by Scorpions and venomous ants.[1107]
Navarette tells us, in the account of his voyage to the Philippine
Islands, that there was there in practice a good and easy remedy against
the Scorpions which abound in that country. This was, when they went to
bed, to make a commemoration of St. George. He himself, he says, for
many years continued this devotion, and, “God be praised,” he adds, “the
Saint always delivered me both there and in other countries from those
and such like insects.” He confesses, however, they used another remedy
besides, which was to rub all about the beds with garlic.[1108]
Navarette[1109] and Barbot[1110] both tell us that a certain remedy
against the sting of a Scorpion, is to rub the wound with a child’s
private member. This, the latter adds, immediately takes away the pain,
and then the venom exhales. The moisture that comes from a hen’s mouth,
Barbot says, is also good for the same.
The Persians believe that Scorpions may be deprived of the power of
stinging, by means of a certain prayer which they make use of for that
purpose. The person who has the power of “binding the Scorpion,” as it
is called, turns his face toward the sign Scorpio, in the heavens, and
repeats this prayer; while every person present, at the conclusion of a
sentence, claps his hands. After this is done they think that they are
perfectly safe; nor, if they should chance to see any Scorpions during
that night, do they scruple to take hold of them, trusting to the
efficacy of this fancied all-powerful charm. “I have frequently seen,”
says Francklin, “the man in whose family I lived, repeat the
above-mentioned prayer, on being desired by his children to bind the
Scorpions; after which the whole family has gone quietly and contentedly
to bed, fully persuaded that they could receive no hurt by them.”[1111]
Bell says the Persians “have such a dread of these creatures, that, when
provoked by any person, they wish a Kashan Scorpion may sting
him.”[1112]
An old story is, that a Scorpion surrounded with live coals, finding no
method of escaping, grows desperate from its situation, and stings
itself to death. This, though considered a mere fable of antiquity, may
still have some truth, if we believe the following from the pen of
Ulloa: “We more than once,” says this traveler, “entertained ourselves
with an experiment of putting a Scorpion into a glass vessel, and
injecting a little smoke of tobacco, and immediately by stopping it
found that its aversion to this smell is such, that it falls into the
most furious agitations, till, giving itself several stings on the head,
it finds relief by destroying itself.”[1113] There is also told a story
in the East Indies, that “the Scorpion is sometimes so pestered with the
pismires, that he stings himself to death in the head with his tail, and
so becomes a prey to the pismires.”[1114]
The Scorpion was an emblem of the Egyptian goddess Selk; and she is
usually found represented with this animal bound upon her head.[1115]
Ælian mentions Scorpions of Coptos, which, though inflicting a deadly
sting, and dreaded by the people, so far respected the Egyptian goddess
Isis, who was particularly worshiped in that city, that women, in going
to express their grief before her, walked with bare feet, or lay upon
the ground, without receiving any injury from them.[1116]
The Ethiopians that dwell near the River Hydaspis commonly eat Scorpions
and serpents without the slightest harm, “which certainly proceeds from
no other thing than a secret and wonderful constitution of the body!”
says Mercurialis.[1117]
Lutfullah, the learned Mohammedan gentleman, in his Autobiography,
relates the following:
“On the morning of the 11th (April, 1839), I ordered my servant boy to
shake my bedding and put it in the sun for an hour or so, that the
moisture imbibed by the quilt might be dried. As soon as the quilt was
removed from its place, what did I behold but an immense Scorpion,
tapering towards its tail of nine vertebræ, armed with a sting at the
end, crawling with impunity at the edge of the carpet. I had never seen
such a large monster before. It was black in the body, with small
bristles all over, dark green in the tail, and red at the sting. This
hideous sight rendered me and the servant horror-struck. In the mean
time, an Afghan friend of mine, by name Ata Mohamed Khan Kakar, a
respectable resident of the town, honoured me with a visit, and, seeing
the reptile, observed, ‘Lutfullah, you are a lucky man, having made a
narrow escape this morning. This cursed worm is called Jerrara, and its
fatal sting puts a period to animal life in a moment; return, therefore,
your thanks to the Lord, all merciful, who gave you a new life in having
saved you from the mortal sting of this evil bed-companion of yours.’ ‘I
have no fear of the worm,’ replied I, ‘for it dare not sting me unless
it is written in the book of fate to be stung by it.’ Saying this, I
made the animal crawl into a small earthen vessel, and stopped the mouth
of it with clay; and then making a large fire, I put the vessel therein
for an hour or so, to turn the reptile into ashes, which, administered
in doses of half a grain to adults, are a specific remedy for violent
colicky pains.”[1118]
The ashes of burnt Scorpions, besides being good for colicky pains, as
Lutfullah says, were often prescribed by the ancient physicians for
stone in the bladder;[1119] and Topsel, quoting Kiranides, has the
following: “If a man take a vulgar Scorpion and drown the same in a
porringer of oyl in the wane of the moon, and therewithall afterward
anoynt the back from the shoulders to the hips, and also the head and
forehead, with the tips of the fingers and toes of one that is a
demoniack or a lunatick person, it is reported, that he shall ease and
cure him in short time. And the like is reported of the Scorpion’s sting
joyned with the top of basil wherein is seed, and with the heart of a
swallow, all included in a piece of harts skin.”[1120] The oil of
Scorpions, Brassavolus says, “drives out worms miraculously;” and oil of
Scorpions’ and vipers’ “tongues is a most excellent remedy against the
plague, as Crinitus testifies, i. 7.”[1121] Galen prescribes Scorpions
for jaundice, and Kiranides the same for the several kinds of ague.
“Plinius Secundus saith, that a quartan ague, as the magicians report,
will be cured in three daies by a Scorpion’s four last joynts of his
tail, together with the gristle of his ear, so wrapped up in a black
cloth, that the sick patient may neither perceive the Scorpion that is
applied, nor him that bound it on.... Samonicus commends Scorpions
against pains in the eyes, in these verses:
If that some grievous pain perplex thy sight,
Wool wet in oyl is good bound on all night.
Carry about thee a live Scorpion’s eye,
Ashes of coleworts if thou do apply,
With bruised frankincense, goat’s milk, and wine,
One night will prove this remedy divine.”[1122]
The following Asiatic fable of the Scorpion and the Tortoise is from the
Beharistan of Jamy: A Scorpion, armed with pernicious sting and filthy
poison, undertook a journey. Coming to the bank of a wide river, he
stopped in great perplexity, wanting height of leg to cross over, yet
very unwilling to return. A Tortoise, seeing his situation, and moved
with compassion, took him on his back, sprang into the river, and was
swimming toward the opposite shore, when he heard a noise on his shell
as of something striking him; he called out to know what it was; the
ungrateful Scorpion answered, “It is the motion of my sting only, I
know it cannot affect you, but it is a habit which I cannot relinquish.”
“Indeed,” replied the Tortoise, “then I cannot do better than free so
evil-minded a creature from his bad disposition, and secure the good
from his malevolence.” Saying which he dived under the water, and the
waves soon carried the Scorpion beyond the bourn of existence.
When, in this banquet house of vice and strife,
A knave oft strikes the various stings of fraud,
’Tis best the sea of death ingulf him soon,
That he be freed from man, and man from him.[1123]
Topsel, in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, has the
following in his chapter on the Scorpion:
“There is a common adage, _Cornix Scorpium_, a Raven to a Scorpion, and
it is used against them that perish by their own inventions: when they
set upon others, they meet with their matches, as a raven did when it
preyed upon a Scorpion, thus described by Alciatus, under his title
_Justa ultio_, just revenge, saying as followeth:
Raptabat volucer captum pede corvus in auras
Scorpion, audaci præmia parta gulæ.
Ast ille infuso sensim per membra venemo,
Raptorem in stygias compulit ultor aquas.
O risu res digna! aliis qui fata parabat,
Ipse periit, propriis succubuitque dolis.
Which may be Englished thus:
The ravening crow for prey a Scorpion took
Within her foot, and therewithal aloft did flie,
But he empoysoned her by force and stinging stroke,
So ravener in the Stygian Lake did die.
O sportfull game! that he which other for bellyes sake did kill,
By his own deceit should fall into death’s will.
“There be some learned writers, who have compared a Scorpion to an
epigram, or rather an epigram to a Scorpion, because as the sting of the
Scorpion lyeth in the tayl, so the force and vertue of an epigram is in
the conclusion, for _vel acriter salse mordeat, vel jucunde atque
dulciter delectet_, that is, either let it bite sharply at the end, or
else delight pleasingly.”[1124]
Araneidæ--True Spiders.
A little head and body small,
With slender feet and very tall,
Belly great, and from thence come all
The webs it spins.--MOUFET.[1125]
“Domitian sometime,” says Hollingshed incidentally in his Chronicles of
England, “and an other prince yet living, delited so much to see the
iollie combats betwixt a stout Flie and an old Spider.... Some parasites
also in the time of the aforesaid emperour (when they were disposed to
laugh at his follie, and yet would seem in appearance to gratifie his
fantasticall head with some shew of dutiful demenour) could devise to
set their lorde on worke, by letting a fresh flie privilie into his
chamber, which he foorthwith would egerlie have hunted (all other
businesse set apart) and never ceased till he had caught him in his
fingers: whereupon arose the proverbe ‘ne musca quidem,’ altered first
by Vitius Priscus, who being asked whether anie bodie was with Domitian,
answered ‘ne musca quidem,’ whereby he noted his follie. There are some
cockes combs here and there in England, learning it abroad as men
transregionate, which make account also of this pastime, as of a notable
matter, telling what a fight is seene betweene them, if either of them
be lustie and couragious in his kind. One also hath mad a booke of the
Spider and the Flie, wherein he dealeth so profoundlie, and beyond all
measure of skill, that neither he himself that made it, neither anie one
that readeth it can reach unto the meaning thereof.”[1126]
Chapelain, the author of Pucelle, was called by the academicians the
Knight of the Order of the Spider, because he was so avaricious, that
though he had an income of 13,000 livres, and more than 240,000 in ready
money, he wore an old coat so patched, pieced, and threadbare, that the
stitches exhibited no bad resemblance to the fibers produced by that
insect. Being one day present at a large party given by the great Condé,
a Spider of uncommon size fell from the ceiling upon the floor. The
company thought it could not have come from the roof, and all the
ladies at once agreed that it must have proceeded from Chapelain’s
wig;--the wig so celebrated by the well-known parody.[1127]
The often-told anecdote of the Scottish monarch, Robert Bruce, and the
cottage Spider, is thus related in Chambers’ Miscellany: While wandering
on the wild hills of Carrick, in order to escape the emissaries of
Edward, Robert the Bruce on one occasion passed the night under the
shelter of a poor deserted cottage. Throwing himself down on a heap of
straw, he lay upon his back, with his hands placed under his head,
unable to sleep, but gazing vacantly upward at the rafters of the hut,
disfigured with cobwebs. From thoughts long and dreary about the
hopelessness of the enterprise in which he was engaged, and the
misfortunes he had already encountered, he was roused to take interest
in the efforts of a poor industrious Spider, which had begun to ply its
vocation with the first gray light of morning. The object of the animal
was to swing itself, by its thread, from one rafter to another; but in
the attempt it repeatedly failed, each time vibrating back to the point
whence it had made the effort. Twelve times did the little creature try
to reach the desired spot, and as many times was it unsuccessful. Not
disheartened with its failure, it made the attempt once more, and, lo!
the rafter was gained. “The thirteenth time,” said Bruce, springing to
his feet; “I accept it as a lesson not to despond under difficulties,
and shall once more venture my life in the struggle for the independence
of my beloved country.” The result is well known.[1128]
It is related in the life of Mohammed, that when he and Abubeker were
fleeing for their lives before the Coreishites, they hid themselves for
three days in a cave, over the mouth of which a Spider spread its web,
and a pigeon laid two eggs there, the sight of which made the pursuers
not go in to search for them.[1129]
A similar story is told in the Lives of the Saints, of St. Felix of
Nola: “But the Saint,” says Butler, “in the mean time had slept a little
out of the way, and crept through a hole in a ruinous old wall, which
was instantly closed up by Spiders’ webs. His enemies, never imagining
anything could have lately passed where they saw so close a Spider’s
web, after a fruitless search elsewhere, returned in the evening without
their prey. Felix finding among the ruins, between two houses, an old
well half dry, hid himself in it for six months; and received during
that time wherewithal to subsist by means of a devout Christian
woman.”[1130]
It is said of Heliogabalus, that, for the purpose of estimating the
magnitude of the City of Rome, he commanded a collection of Spiders to
be made.[1131]
Illustrative of the singularly pleasurable effect of music upon Spiders,
in the Historie de la Musique, et de ses Effets, we find the following
relation:
“Monsieur de ----, captain of the Regiment of Navarre, was confined six
months in prison for having spoken too freely of M. de Louvois, when he
begged leave of the governor to grant him permission to send for his
lute to soften his confinement. He was greatly astonished after four
days to see at the time of his playing the mice come out of their holes,
and the Spiders descend from their webs, who came and formed in a circle
round him to hear him with attention. This at first so much surprised
him, that he stood still without motion, when having ceased to play, all
those Spiders retired quietly into their lodgings; such an assembly made
the officer fall into reflections upon what the ancients had told of
Orpheus, Arion, and Amphion. He assured me he remained six days without
again playing, having with difficulty recovered from his astonishment,
not to mention a natural aversion he had for this sort of insects,
nevertheless he began afresh to give a concert to these animals, who
seemed to come every day in greater numbers, as if they had invited
others, so that in process of time he found a hundred of them about him.
In order to rid himself of them he desired one of the jailors to give
him a cat, which he sometimes shut up in a cage when he wished to have
this company and let her loose when he had a mind to dismiss them,
making it thus a kind of comedy that alleviated his imprisonment. I long
doubted the truth of this story, but it was confirmed to me six months
ago by M. P----, intendant of the duchy of V----, a man of merit and
probity, who played upon several instruments to the utmost excellence.
He told me that being at ----, he went into his chamber to refresh
himself after a walk, and took up a violin to amuse himself till supper
time, setting a light upon the table before him; he had not played a
quarter of an hour before he saw several spiders descend from the
ceiling, who came and ranged themselves round about the table to hear
him play, at which he was greatly surprised, but this did not interrupt
him, being willing to see the end of so singular an occurrence. They
remained on the table very attentively till somebody came to tell him
that supper was ready, when having ceased to play, he told me these
insects remounted to their webs, to which he would suffer no injury to
be done. It was a diversion with which he often entertained himself out
of curiosity.”[1132]