nny countries other kinds of serpents are found of greater
quantity than either our adder or our snake, but, as these are not
ordinary and oft to be seen, so I mean not to intreat of them among our
common annoyances. Neither have we the scorpion, a plague of God sent not
long since into Italy, and whose poison (as Apollodorus saith) is white,
neither the tarantula or Neapolitan spider, whose poison bringeth death,
except music be at hand. Wherefore I suppose our country to be the more
happy (I mean in part) for that it is void of these two grievous
annoyances wherewith other nations are plagued.

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. Yet sure
I am of this, that no one living creature corrupteth without the
production of another, as we may see by ourselves, whose flesh doth alter
into lice, and also in sheep for excessive numbers of flesh flies, if they
be suffered to lie unburied or uneaten by the dogs and swine, who often
and happily present such needless generations.

As concerning bees, I think it good to remember that, whereas some ancient
writers affirm it to be a commodity wanting in our island, it is now found
to be nothing so. In old times peradventure we had none indeed; but in my
days there is such plenty of them in manner everywhere that in some
uplan