We have also efts both of the land and water, and likewise the noisome
swifts, whereof to say any more it would be but loss of time, sith
they are all well known, and no region to my knowledge found to be
void of many of them. As for flies (sith it shall not be amiss a
little to touch them also), we have none that can do hurt or hindrance
naturally unto any: for whether they be cut-waisted or whole-bodied,
they are void of poison and all venomous inclination. The cut or girt
waisted (for so I English the word _insecta_) are the hornets, wasps,
bees, and such like, whereof we have great store, and of which an
opinion is conceived that the first do breed of the corruption of dead
horses, the second of pears and apples corrupted, and the last of kine
and oxen: which may be true, especially the first and latter in some
parts of the beast, and not their whole substances, as also in the
second, sith we have never wasps but when our fruit beginneth to wax
ripe. Indeed Virgil and others speak of a generation of bees by
killing or smothering a bruised bullock or calf and laying his bowels
or his flesh wrapped up in his hide in a close house for a certain
season; but how true it is, hitherto I have not tried.
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