A class of women unwind and reel
off the cocoons of these creatures, and afterwards weave a fabric with
the threads thus unwound; a Coan woman of the name of Pamphila,
daughter of Plateus, being credited with the first invention of the
fabric. After the same fashion the carabus or stag-beetle comes from
grubs that live in dry wood: at first the grub is motionless, but
after a while the shell bursts and the stag-beetle issues forth.
From the cabbage is engendered the cabbageworm, and from the
leek the prasocuris or leekbane; this creature is also winged. From
the flat animalcule that skims over the surface of rivers comes the
oestrus or gadfly; and this accounts for the fact that gadflies most
abound in the neighbourhood of waters on whose surface these
animalcules are observed. From a certain small, black and hairy
caterpillar comes first a wingless glow-worm; and this creature
again suffers a metamorphosis, and transforms into a winged insect
named the bostrychus (or hair-curl).
Gnats grow from ascarids; and ascarids are engendered in the
slime of wells, or in places where there is a deposit left by the
draining off of water. This slime decays, and first turns white,
then black, and finally blood-red; and at this stage there originate
in it, as it were, little tiny bits of red weed, which at first
wriggle about all clinging together, and finally break loose and
swim in the water, and are hereupon known as ascarids.
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