“ ‘But this by sure experiment we know, That living creatures from corruption grow: Hide in a hollow pit a slaughter’d steer, Bees from his putrid bowels will appear; Who, like their parents, haunt the fields, and bring Their honey harvest home, and hope another spring. The warlike steed is multiplied, we find, To wasps, and hornets of the warrior kind. Cut from a crab his crooked claws, and hide The rest in earth, a scorpion thence will glide, And shoot his sting; his tail in circles toss’d Refers the limbs his backward father lost; And worms, that stretch on leaves their filmy loom, Crawl from their bags, and butterflies become. Ev’n slime begets the frog’s loquacious race: Short of their feet at first, in little space With arms, and legs endued, long leaps they take, Raised on their hinder part, and swim the lake, And waves repel; for nature gives their kind, To that intent, a length of legs behind.