Insects
Insects
‘So through the drones, Nature (which rightly takes great care over the bee), reveals wonderfully in this portent their origins and in what way lost bees should be at last restored’.
Ulisse Aldrovandi, De animalibus insectis (Bologna, 1602), p. 60.[1]
Aldrovandi’s De animalibus insectis libri septem: cum singulorum iconibus ad viuum expressis … (Bologna, 1602), which Worth owned in a 1638 edition, was, like many of his volumes, a compendium of ancient sources and contemporary observations. It was one of his few works published during his own lifetime and, as Aldini notes, may therefore show us an unfiltered Aldrovandi, un-affected by later editorial interpretations.[2] His work was ‘the first printed book dedicated entirely to insects’ and for this alone he may be considered as ‘the founder of the modern study of insects’.[3]
Ulisse Aldrovandi, De animalibus insectis libri septem: cum singulorum iconibus ad viuum expressis … (Bologna, 1638), Sig. †4r, classification.
As this image demonstrates, Aldrovandi, at least in the case of insects, used a Ramist approach, using dichotmous tables, but referencing the medieval authority of St. Albert the Great (c. 1193–1280). Here he initially divides insects based on their habitat: insects are either aquatic or land-based, with further morphological divisions between those with or without wings.[4] Aldrovandi predated the invention of the microscope and this impacted on his understanding of metamorphosis, which, as Neri points out, in turn meant that sometimes he divided a single species between different categories – her example being caterpillars and butterflies.[5]
Ulisse Aldrovandi, De animalibus insectis libri septem: cum singulorum iconibus ad viuum expressis … (Bologna, 1638), p. 244, butterflies.
Aldrovandi includes a number of woodcuts of butterflies in De animalibus insectis libri septem. These and images of other insects may be found in Tomo VII of the Tavoli di Animali which was the principal source material for the printed book. Many of these were the work of a German artist, Cornelius Schwindt (1566–1632), who was employed by Aldrovandi in the early 1590s.[6] As Neri has convincingly demonstrated, Aldrovandi used his image database in the Tavoli in imaginative ways to produce new classfications of insects based on size and type.[7] Using an index of insect images he drew up in 1593, Neri points out that this particular image, of two butterflies, was re-used by Aldrovandi, in a different context, in his printed work.
Ulisse Aldrovandi, De animalibus insectis libri septem: cum singulorum iconibus ad viuum expressis … (Bologna, 1638), p. 230, bees.
Perhaps the insect which engendered the most discussion in early modern Europe was the bee, a winged insect which had been discussed since ancient times because, as Aristotle stated, bees were a ‘peculiar and extraordinary kind of animal’, that, like human, were social beings.[8] Pliny the Elder (d. 79 AD) was even more intrigued by the social dynamics of the hive, declaring that:
But among all of these species the chief place belongs to the bees, and this rightly is the species chiefly admired, because they alone of this genus have been created for the sake of man. They collect honey, that sweetest and most refined and most health-giving of juices, they model combs and wax that serves a thousand practical purposes, they endure toil, they construct works, they have a government and individual enterprises and collective leaders, and a thing that must occasion most surprise, they have a system of manners that outstrips that of all the other animals, although they belong neither to the domesticated not to the wild class. Nature is so mighty a power that out of what is almost a tiny ghost of an animal she has created something incomparable![9]
The social, productive nature of the hive, not to mention the many uses of bees’ produce, ensured that from ancient times, bees were a focus of study. Christian analogies of bees to Christ and their hives to monastic communities ensured their place in medieval and early modern sermons. At the local level, apiaries were popular in monasteries and, as Woolfson notes, during the early modern period printed beekeeping manuals proved popular.[10] The elevation in 1623 of Maffeo Barberini (1568–1644), to the papacy as Pope Urban VIII, led to a flurry of interest in bees for they formed part of the Barberini coat of arms. Three years later, in 1626, the Accademia dei Lincei brought out not one but three texts devoted to bees which they dedicated to Urban VIII: Melissographia, Apes Dianae, and Apiarium.[11]
In the sixteenth century debates revolved around the gender of the lead bee and how bees reproduced. Though Aldrovandi was certainly interested in the contemporary discussions on the topic he ultimately decided to support Virgil’s argument that bees were generated from rotting ox carcasses, declaring that he had proven this by his own experience:
I refer to something new, never heard of or at least seen, nor recorded by any writer that I know of. For once when I had captured a drone, and squeezed its middle with my finger and nail, to see if it emitted some kind of a sting, the body broke, and there suddenly emerged out of the skin of the bottom half a skilfully formed white or yellow head of an ox, with spread out, twisting horns and a muzzle bent inwards. People came to admire this thing exceedingly, and for this reason entreated me to test it out again another time, for which reason I squeezed a further five drones in turn, and as before the same head of an ox always emerged.[12]
Aldrovandi’s adherence to Virgil might at first suggest that his approach to the study of insects was very old-fashioned, but his De animalibus insectis libri septem in fact represents ‘the beginning of a new age of entomology’.[13]
Ulisse Aldrovandi, De animalibus insectis libri septem: cum singulorum iconibus ad viuum expressis … (Bologna, 1638), p. 304, ‘perlae’: antlions.
As Aldini notes, De animalibus insectis libri septem contains some of the earliest printed illustrations of neuropterous insects, and, in his chapter on dragonflies and damselflies, Aldrovandi included images of antlions.[14] He calls all three ‘perlae’ (referring to their pearly wings). This woodcut depicts adult antlions without antennae. Antlions (which prey on ants) had been known since ancient times and, as Aldini observes, Aldrovandi was familiar with one of the most important medieval sources on them: Saint Albert the Great.[15] Aldrovandi was unaware of the metamorphosis of antlions and relied heavily on the latter source for his commentary on antlion larva:
Μυρμηκολέων, or Formicoleo, according to Albert the Great is the name of an insect which is like a lion among ants, at the same time both ant and lion, a small animal but so dangerous for the ants which, hiding itself in the dust and constructing a kind of round rampart forming a trench, attacks the ants while they are carrying grains of wheat and kills them insidiously. Other authors write that it is of the same family as ants, but much bigger, and while it is still young and weak, it simulates peace and mildness; but when it has taken strength, it distains its former companions and rushes forward against bigger masses.[16]
Ulisse Aldrovandi, De animalibus insectis libri septem: cum singulorum iconibus ad viuum expressis … (Bologna, 1638), p. 252, ‘Papilio subcastaneus’: owlfly.
While the identification of Aldrovandi’s adult antlions present relatively few problems, he also included a mysterious insect which he called ‘Papilio subcastaneus’ (no. 5 in the above image). He described it as follows:
The one illustrated at place five undoubtedly has an unusually-shaped head, with two round black tubercles on the sides, bristling with many black hairs, and another two on the front, which however are of the same colour as the head – i.e. intensely red – on the sides of which there are two more tubercles, black like the first mentioned. The wings sprout from the lower extremity of the back and they are of rather blackish colour, with golden-yellow lines and stains. The abdomen is bifurcated, all yellowish, and spotted here and there with red areas. The legs and the antennae are blackish.[17]
Aldini suggests that this may well be an owlfly (ascalaphid), though points out discrepancies between how Aldrovandi describes it and its colour representation in the Tavoli di Animali.[18] As he notes, the identification of the owlfly presented a problem not only for Aldrovandi, but also for other naturalists who linked it with dragonflies and butterflies.[19]
Atlas moth (Attacus atlas) © Zoological Museum, Trinity College Dublin.
Atlas Moth (Attacus atlas). Found in tropical and forest habitats throughout Asia, the atlas moth is one of the largest and most spectacular moths in the world. Despite their impressive appearance, the adults lack the ability to feed and only survive for a few short weeks. And while everybody loves butterflies, there are just 35 species found in Ireland compared to around 1,500 species of moth. Moths remain our unsung heroes, pollinating huge numbers of plants as they go, with networks that are larger and more complex than those of bees and butterflies..
19th century insect collections of Dr Harry Murray (1875-1955) © Zoological Museum, Trinity College Dublin.
The collection consists of 28 drawers in two bespoke wooden cabinets, donated to the Zoological museum ca. 1955. Most of the insects consist of Irish moths and butterflies, but there is a substantial proportion of Swiss and English material. There are over 4,000 specimens in the collection and it ranks as one of the few really comprehensive collections of its kind in Ireland. Murray’s records seem to turn up everywhere and are a clear indication of how nationally important the collection remains today. A recent review of the contents showed 336 national records for the Waterford county alone.
Text: Dr Elizabethanne Boran, Librarian of the Edward Worth Library, and Dr Martyn Linnie, Curator of the Zoological Museum, Trinity College Dublin.
Sources
Aldini, Rinaldo Nicoli, ‘Ulisse Aldrovandi and Antonio Vallisneri: the Italian contribution to knowledge and Neuropterous Insects between the 16th and the early 18th centuries’, Ann. Mus. Civ. St. nat. Ferrara, 8 (2007), 9–26.
Aldini, Rinaldo Nicoli, ‘Apis amphibia, Cicada, Cimex, Cimices sylvestres, Tipulae … The insects now known as Hemiptera in Ulisse Aldrovandi’s De Animalibus Insectis (1602)’, Bulletin of Insectology, 61, no1 (2008), 103–5.
Aldini, Rinaldo Nicoli, ‘What is the supposed owlfly illustrated in Aldrovandi’s De animalibus insectis (1602)’, in Florian Weihrauch et al. (eds), Proceedings of the XIII International Symposium of Neuropterology 17-22 June Laufen, Germany (Wolnzach, 2019), 253–64.
Neri, Janice, The Insect and the Image. Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1700 (Minneapolis, 2011).
Pliny, Natural History, Books 8–11, translated by W.H.S. Jones (Harvard, 1963).
Woolfson, Jonathan, ‘The Renaissance of bees’, Renaissance Studies, 24, no. 2 (2010), 281–300.
[1] Translation from Woolfson, Jonathan, ‘The Renaissance of bees’, Renaissance Studies, 24, no. 2 (2010), 281.
[2] Aldini, Rinaldo Nicoli, ‘Ulisse Aldrovandi and Antonio Vallisner: the Italian contribution to knowledge and Neuropterous Insects between the 16th and the early 18th centuries’, Ann. Mus. Civ. St. nat. Ferrara, 8 (2007), 12.
[3] Aldini, Rinaldo Nicoli, ‘What is the supposed owlfly illustrated in Aldrovandi’s De animalibus insectis (1602)’, in Florian Weihrauch et al. (eds), Proceedings of the XIII International Symposium of Neuropterology 17-22 June Laufen, Germany (Wolnzach, 2019), 254, and Aldini, Rinaldo Nicoli, ‘Apis amphibia, Cicada, Cimex, Cimices sylvestres, Tipulae … The insects now known as Hemiptera in Ulisse Aldrovandi’s De Animalibus Insectis (1602)’, Bulletin of Insectology, 61, no. 1 (2008), 103.
[4] Aldini, ‘Ulisse Aldrovandi and Antonio Vallisneri’, 18.
[5] Neri, Janice, The Insect and the Image. Visualizing Nature in Early Modern Europe, 1500–1700 (Minneapolis, 2011), p. 36.
[6] Ibid, p. 33.
[7] Ibid., p. 36.
[8] Woolfson, ‘The Renaissance of bees’, 283.
[9] Pliny, Natural History, Books 8–11, translated by W.H.S. Jones (Harvard, 1963), Book 11, 4: pp 439, 441.
[10] Woolfson, ‘The Renaissance of bees’, 286.
[11] On this see Freedberg, David, The Eye of the Lynx. Galileo, his friends, and the beginnings of modern natural history (Chicago and London, 2002), pp 151–94.
[12] Woolfson, ‘The Renaissance of bees’, 281.
[13] Aldini, ‘Ulisse Aldrovandi and Antonio Vallisner’, 12.
[14] Ibid., 12 and 16.
[15] Ibid., 9.
[16] Ibid., 16; translation 24–25.
[17] Ulisse Aldrovandi, De animalibus insectis libri septem: cum singulorum iconibus ad viuum expressis … (Bologna, 1638), p. 252, translated by Aldini, ‘What is the supposed owlfly illustrated in Aldrovandi’s De animalibus insectis (1602)’, 258.
[18] On this see ibid., 253–64.
[19] Ibid., 253.