perfect insects; that these insects were all of the order Coleoptera, vulgarly Beetles; and that Cantharis was a general term denoting several species of beetles, but not all the species indifferently. This word is always employed by the ancient authors to denote those species of Coleoptera, or beetles, which are brilliantly coloured and remarkable for their vesicant or venomous properties; but those authors differ greatly from each other with regard to the species which they have in view.
Thus the Cantharis of Aristotle appears to be the same species as that mentioned by Aristophanes[1]; but it is an insect very different from that with black and yellow bands, which has been so well described by Dioscorides that it is impossible to be mistaken by modern naturalists. To this latter insect must be referred the winged Cantharis of a fulvous colour, to which on account of its malignity and mortal poison Epiphanius compares heresy[2]. The Cantharis of Origen[3], produced from the larva of an insect which lives in the flesh of the ass, is evidently a different species from that of Epiphanius and Dioscorides, and also from that of Aristotle and Aristophanes, though more resembling the latter.
Pliny mentions several species of Cantharis[4], which for want of exact details are difficult to recognise; but when he says (book xviii. chap. 44.), "Est et Cantharis dictus Scarabæus parvus frumenta erodens[5]," we instantly fix upon the small and formidable coleopterous insect to which he here gives the name of Cantharis. Theophrastus, who has also mentioned the little insect engendered in corn, gives it the name of Cantharis.
From what has been said it appears that to find the insect named Cantharis considered by the ancients as injurious to the vine, we must seek for it among the perfect insects of the class Coleoptera; among those which are brilliantly coloured and distinguished by their vesicant venomous quality; and among the largest as well as the smallest species of that class.
IX. Kampe and Phtheir.—I class these two words together for an instant, regardless of their different signification, because I find them united in a passage of the Geoponics[6], the only place in which the first is mentioned in connexion with the vine. The author gives a recipe used by the Africans to preserve the vine from the Phtheirs and Kampes which infest it. Ctesias also mentions the Phtheirs which destroy the vine in Greece[7].
- ↑ Aristophanes quoted In Aldrovandus De Insect., chap. iii. vol. i. p. 180.
- ↑ St. Epiphanius, Panar. Rom., p. 1067, A. edit. Petav.
- ↑ Origen, Contra Cels., book iv. chap. 57. p. 549, A. edit. Delavue.
- ↑ Pliny, Hist. Nat., book xxix. chap. 30; vol. iii. p. 107. edit. Miller.
- ↑ Pliny, Hist. Nat., chap. 44. or 17. vol. vi. p. 138 of the edition of Franzius.
- ↑ Geoponica, edit. Niclas, chap. xxx. vol. iii. p. 485.
- ↑ Ctesias, Indicorim, chap, xx p. 253. edit. Baehr. Frankf. 1824, 8vo.
