I ran across this delightful poem about insects (and a few other invertebrates) today, while working on something for the International Society of Hymenopterists. It was written by Sara Coleridge, as part of her collection called Pretty lessons in verse, for good children; with some lessons in Latin in easy rhyme (1839; John W. Parker, West Strand London; see page 125). It’s too good not to share!
A common fly is musca,
And apis means a bee,
Papilio‘s a butterfly,
So beautiful to see:
A spider is aranea,
And limax means a snail;
And vespa is the slender wasp,—
A sting is in his tail.
Cicāda is an insect
That sings a merry song;
Formīca is the busy ant
That labours late and long:
And vermis is the earth-worm
That crawls along the ground;
And fucus is the lazy drone,
That ne’er at work is found.
The hornet fierce is crabro,
And tinea the moth
That flies about the candle’s flame;
And frets away your cloth;
And culex is the humming gnat,
And pulex is a flea;
I wish that neither of the twain
Would ever come to me.
An entomologist, of course, will recognize the Latin words in this poem as taxonomic names (mainly genera) we use to reference many insects today (follow the links above). There are a few exceptions, though:
- Aranea doesn’t appear to be a genus, at least with that spelling, but Araneae is the taxonomic name by which we refer to all true spiders.
- I’m not sure about Cicada as a proper generic name anymore. Linnaeus assigned it to a number of insects now in several different families.
- Vermis appears to be a genus of tapeworms (Cestoda), actually, but its status as a valid taxonomic name is doubtful.
- I wish I knew what fucus referred to! It appears to be a genus of seaweed, rather than any lazy drone of an insect I’m familiar with. The few Latin resources I tried were not especially enlightening.
Lastly, a clarification: only females in the genus Vespa have sting in their “tails”. Males are harmless!
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