Note 59 — ORDER I. COLEOPTERA—BEETLES.

Plut. Of Isis and Osiris, p. 220. The translation of this passage as given by Philemon Holland is as follows: “The Fly called the Beetill they (the Egyptians) reverence, because they observe in them I wot not what little slender Images (like as in drops of water we see the resemblance of the Sun) of the Divine power.… As for the Beetills, they hold, that throughout all their kinds there is no female, but all the males do blow or cast their seed into a certain globus or round matter in the form of balls, which they drive from them and roll to and fro contrariwise, like as the Sun, when he moveth himself from the West to the East, seemeth to turn about the Heaven clean contrary.”—p. 1071, ed. of 1657.