After a few
days they stand straight up on the water motionless and hard, and by
and by the husk breaks off and the gnats are seen sitting upon it,
until the sun's heat or a puff of wind sets them in motion, when
they fly away.
With all grubs and all animals that break out from the grub
state, generation is due primarily to the heat of the sun or to wind.
Ascarids are more likely to be found, and grow with unusual
rapidity, in places where there is a deposit of a mixed and
heterogeneous kind, as in kitchens and in ploughed fields, for the
contents of such places are disposed to rapid putrefaction. In autumn,
also, owing to the drying up of moisture, they grow in unusual
numbers.
The tick is generated from couch-grass. The cockchafer comes
from a grub that is generated in the dung of the cow or the ass. The
cantharus or scarabeus rolls a piece of dung into a ball, lies
hidden within it during the winter, and gives birth therein to small
grubs, from which grubs come new canthari. Certain winged insects also
come from the grubs that are found in pulse, in the same fashion as in
the cases described.
Flies grow from grubs in the dung that farmers have gathered
up into heaps: for those who are engaged in this work assiduously
gather up the compost, and this they technically term 'working-up' the
manure.
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