Note 2 — Chapter VIII · THE ERGATES; THE COSSUS

What are these worms exactly? The Latin naturalist is not very explicit; he tells us nothing at all except that they live in the trunks of oaks. No matter: with this detail we cannot go astray. The worm in question is the larva of the Great Capricorn (Cerambyx heros).2 A frequent inmate of the oak, it is, in fact, a lusty grub and attracts one’s attention by its resemblance to a fat, white sausage. But the expression prægrandesque roborum vermes should, to my thinking, be generalized a little. Pliny was no precisian. Having occasion to speak of a big worm, he mentions that of the oak, the commonest of the larger ones; and he overlooks the others or takes them for granted, probably failing to distinguish them from the first.