Observations on a mode practised in Italy of excluding the common house-fly from apartments / by William Spence.

  • William Spence
Date:
[1836]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Observations on a mode practised in Italy of excluding the common house-fly from apartments / by William Spence. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    seems not less to be wondered at that the passage in Herodotus which announces it should have been so little noticed by commentators, not one of whom seems to have been struck with the singularity of his statements, which, whether correct or not, equally required observa¬ tion. One would think that in reading this passage it must have seemed to them rather strange that a casting-net whose meshes must have been wide enough to admit several gnats at a time should yet be asserted by Herodotus to be a sufficient defence from them, though they bit through either linen or woollen; and one may be well sur¬ prised that whilst they have spent pages on passages far less curious, they should pass this over with a mere reference to Juvenal or Horace where these authors allude to the conopeum, or gnat-cur¬ tain. The fact seems that all these commentators have been led astray by the word conopeum, confounding the casting-net of the Egyptian fishermen with the gnat-curtain of the Romans, which both from the definitions given of it, “linum tenuissimis maculis nectum,” (“thread knitted together in very fine meshes,”) and from the use as banners, to which Horace supposed it applied, “ Interque signa (turpe !) militaria Sol aspicit conopeum,” (Epod. lib. ix. ode 9.) was evidently of a texture resembling our muslin or gauze. If, therefore, they had been duly struck by the passage, they ought either to have shown how it was that a casting-net could exclude gnats as effectually as gauze, or else, that in point of fact the texture of both was the same, the casting-net having, notwithstanding the apparent absurdity of the supposition, meshes so small as to prevent gnats from coming through them, or, on the other hand, the conopeum, though applicable for a banner, having meshes as large as a casting- net. But nothing of this kind has been attempted in the way of explanation by Schweighseuser, Larcher, Baehr, or any of the com¬ mentators I have consulted, who all seem to regard the conopeum, or gnat-curtain, to be the same as the amphiblestron of Herodotus, when in fact, except in the advantages derived from each, they have no more similarity than the paper bags used for covering grapes have with a cherry-tree netf- In concluding these imperfect remarks, I hope, in order to put be¬ yond question the accuracy, or the contrary, of the statement of He- t In a curious poetical tract, entitled ‘ An Epistle from the Fens to Mr. * ** * * * at Rome, ” dated May 1, 1727, which my friend the Rev. F. W. Hope, F.R.S., purchased at Mr. Heber’s late sale, and which he has had the goodness to show me since the above was written, the author falls into the same error with all the com-
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