Page:Scientific Memoirs, Vol. 1 (1837).djvu/207

 error of this estimable archæologist is a slight one, since the Scarabæus Mimas is a Copris as well as the Midas of Egypt, which it resembles even ahnost to its colours. There is therefore reason to think that the Egyptian stone mentioned by M. Millin represented the Copris Midas which M. Savigny discovered in Egypt.

The third species of Scarabæus employed, according to Pliny, as an amulet against the effects of the quartan ague, was named the Fuller (Fullo). This insect was spotted with white; and the mode of employing it was to divide it into two portions, one of which was affixed to each arm, while the two other species of insects of which we have treated were attached only to the left arm. "Tertium, qui vocatur Fullo, albis guttis, dissectum utrique lacerto adligant, cætera sinistro." All Pliny's commentators are silent upon this remarkable passage, and upon the insect named Fullo by the Romans; but naturalists have not been equally careless. Mouffet, whose work appeared after his death in 1634, describing the largest species of Chafer of our climates, which is nearly an inch and a half in length, and is distinguished with facility by the brilliant white spots upon its corselet and elytra, combats the opinion of those who consider the Fullo of Pliny as a Copris or a Forficula, and supposes that by this name the Roman naturalist intended to denote the large species of Chafer with white spots which he (Mouffet) had just described. Ray, whose History of Insects was published in 1710, is of the same opinion ; and lastly, M. Schœnherr, in his laborious work specially devoted to the synonymy of insects, cites Pliny for his Melolontha Fullo.

It is with regret that I contest an opinion apparently so well established by the suffrages of so many eminent naturalists; but my own observations are opposed to it. I have examined a great number of antique stones upon which insects were sculptured or engraved, some of which have perhaps been used as amulets, for they were pierced in a manner adapted for suspension at the neck, and they all represented either Coprophagi or Cetoniæ. Not one of them can belong to a species of Chafer, which may be easily distinguished from the insects previously mentioned by a more lengthened form. The fact is the same with regard to the obelisks, and all the monuments of Egypt of which drawings have been published. I here speak only of the Scarabæi or Coleoptera, and not of the species of Bee or Wasp sculptured upon the obelisks at Luxor. M.Latreille, who has been engaged in a similar examination, has arrived at the same conclusion.