on,
turne to be beetle-flies by a certaine metamorphosis which Nature
maketh from one creature to another."--Lib. xi. c. xx.

And soon after he says of wasps:

"All the sorte of these live upon flesh, contrarie to _the manner of
bees, which will not touch a dead carcasse_."

This brings Shakepeare's lines to mind:

" 'Tis seldom when the bee doth leave her comb
In the _dead carrion_."
_Henry IV._, Part II. Act IV. Sc. 4.

The _Belfast News Letter_ of Friday, Aug. 10, 1832, gives one of these rare
occurrences:

"A few days ago, when the sexton was digging a grave in Temple Cranney
(a burying-place in Portaferry, co. Down), he came to a coffin which
had been there two or three years: this he thought necessary to remove.
In this operation, he was startled by a great quantity of wild bees
issuing forth from the coffin; and upon lifting the lid, it was found
that they had formed their combs in the dead man's skull and mouth,
which were full. The nest was made of the hair of the head, together
with shavings that had been put in the coffin with the corpse."

This quotation is given in an interesting work of Mr. Patterson's, _Letters
on the Natural History of the Insects mentioned in Shakspeare's Plays_:
London, 1838.

Your correspondent R. T. shows that _serpents_ were supposed to be
generated by _human_ carcases. Pliny says:

"I have heard many a man say that the _marrow of a man's backebone_
will breed to a snake."--_Hist. Nat._, x. 66.

The story of the "fair young German gentleman" reminds me of one of a
gentle shepherd and his beloved Amarante, told in De Britaine's _Human
Prudence_, 12th edit., Dublin, 1726, Part I. p. 171. The corpse of the
"Caesar," seen by St. Augustine and Monica, was most probably that of
Maximus, Emperor of the West, slain by the soldiers of Theodosius, A.D.
388.

Sir Thos. Browne--"treating of the conceit that the mandrake grows under
gallowses, and arises from the fat, or [Greek: ouron], of the dead
malefactor, and hence has the form of a man--says:

"This is so far from being verified of animals in their corruptive
mutations into plants, that they maintain not this similitude in their
nearer translation into animals. So when the ox corrupteth into bees,
or the horse into hornets, they come not forth in the image of their
originals. So the corrupt and excrementitious humours in man are