and consequently the Spondyle mentioned in this last passage, as a plant (the parsnep)[1].
M. Schneider in his note does not attempt to prove the accuracy of his translation, but contents himself with citing the authority of Scaliger. I confess that I here lean to the opinion of Le Camus. It is not, however, necessary to discuss the subject; and the circumstance that Aristotle has twice mentioned an insect named Spondyle or Sphondyleis of little importance, since he gives us no information respecting it. In the second passage, indeed, he compares it to the Staphylinus, but we know still less of the Staphylinus than of the Spondyle, and in neither passage is any mention made of the vine. Nor should we have noticed the Spondyle of Aristotle were it he alone who had spoken of it; but Pliny[2] remarks upon the Aristolochia and the wild vine (Vitis silvestris), which vegetates a year in the shade, that no animal infests the roots of these plants, nor of others of which he has treated, excepting the Spondyle, a sort of serpent, which attacks them all. "Et Aristolochia ac vitis silvestris anno in umbra servantur: et animalium quidem exterorum nullum aliud radices a nobis dictas attingit excepta Spondyle quce omnes persequitur. Gemis id serpentis est."
Schneider after quoting this passage adds, "Ineptè ut solet."
Pliny has conceived with genius and executed with ability an abridged encyclopædia of human knowledge; he may perhaps be esteemed the author of the most learned work ever composed; and it certainly is not allowable to speak of a writer of such merit with the asperity and disdain manifested on this occasion by the learned German. However, if the severity of the criticism sometimes occasioned by the difficulties we experience from the gross errors into which Pliny has been led, by the necessity of treating of so many things which he understood imperfectly, can be excused, it is certainly in the editor or translator of Aristotle's Natural History of Animals. Pliny has borrowed extensively from that admirable work; sometimes he is contented with translating it; but even then he generally confuses, by inaccurate or pompously obscure phrases, what Aristotle had explained with clearness and precision, and often mixes with it popular and ridiculous stories, or erroneous and inconsistent notions. But it would have been better if M. Schneider, who combines the knowledge of a naturalist with the erudition of a philologist, instead of allowing himself to use the expression we have cited on this passage of Pliny, had inquired what advantage might be reaped from it; he would then have seen that the error of Pliny will enable us to determine what species of insect is meant by the Spondyle in the first passage of Aristotle, and perhaps also in
