names are flagrant; sometimes the allusions are
ridiculous, grotesque, or merely imbecile. So long as they have a decent
sound, how infinitely preferable are locutions in which etymology finds
nothing to dissect! Of such would be the word _fullo_, were it not that
it already has a meaning which immediately occurs to the mind. This
Latin expression means a _fuller_; a person who kneads and presses cloth
under a stream of water, making it flexible and ridding it of the
asperities of weaving. What connection has the subject of this chapter
with the fuller of cloth? I may puzzle my head in vain: no acceptable
reply will occur to me.

The term _fullo_ as applied to an insect is found in Pliny. In one
chapter the great naturalist treats of remedies against jaundice,
fevers, and dropsy. A little of everything enters into this antique
pharmacy: the longest tooth of a black dog; the nose of a mouse wrapped
in a pink cloth; the right eye of a green lizard torn from the living
animal and placed in a bag of kid-skin; the heart of a serpent, cut out
with the left hand; the four articulations of the tail of a scorpion,
including the dart, wrapped tightly in a black cloth, so that for three
days the sick man can see neither the remedy nor him that applies it;
and a number of other extravagances. We may well close the book, alarmed
at the slough of the imbecility whence the art of healing has come down
to us.

In the midst of these imbecilities, the preludes of medicine, we find a
mention of the "fuller." _Tertium qui vocatur fullo, albis guttis,
dissectum utrique lacerto adalligant_, says the text. To treat fevers
divide the fuller beetle in two parts and apply half under the right arm
and half under the left.

[Illustration: THE PINE-CHAFER.

(_Melolontha fullo._)]

Now what did the ancient naturalist mean by the term "fuller beetle"? We
do not precisely know. The qualification _albis guttis_, white spots,
would fit the Pine-chafer well enough, but it is not sufficient to
make us certain. Pliny himself does not seem to have been very certain
of the identity of the remedy. In his time men's eyes had not yet
learned to see the insect world. Insects were too small; they were well
enough for amusing children, who would tie them to the end of a long
thread and make them walk in circles, but they were not worthy of
occupying the attention of a self-respecting man.

Pliny apparently derived the word from the country-folk, always poor