"Earth walks on Earth, Glittering in gold: Earth goes to Earth, Sooner than it wold: Earth builds on Earth, Palaces and towers: Earth says to Earth: Soon, all shall be ours."
The above, by Sir W. Scott, I _believe_, has never appeared in print to my knowledge. It was recited to me by a friend of Sir W. Scott.
_Crassus' Saying._--I find in the Diary of the poet Moore (in Lord John Russell's edition), vol. ii. p. 148., a conversation recorded with Dr. Parr, in which the Doctor quotes "the witticism that made Crassus laugh (the only time in his life): 'Similes habent labra lactucas.'"
It appears (see the quotations in Facciolati) that this sage and laughter-moving remark of Crassus was made on seeing an ass eating a thistle; whereon he exclaimed, "Similes habent labra lactucas."
In Bailey's edition of Facciolati it is said, "Proverbium habet locum ubi similia similibus contingunt,... quo sensu Angli dicimus, 'Like lips like lettuce: like priest like people.'"
Out of this explanation it is difficult to elicit any sense, much less any "witticism."
I suggest that Crassus' saying meant, "His (the ass's) lips hold thistles and lettuces to be both alike;" wanting the discrimination to distinguish between them. Or, if I may put it into a doggerel rhyme:
"About a donkeys taste why need we fret us? To lips like his a thistle is a lettuce."
Huber, in his _Observations on the Natural History of Bees_, avers that the moth called the _Sphynx atropos_ invades and plunders with impunity a hive containing thousands of bees, notwithstanding the watchfulness, pugnacity, and formidable weapons of those insects. To account for this phenomenon, he states that the queen bee has the faculty of emitting a certain sound which instantly strikes the bees motionless; and he conjectures that this burglarious moth, being endowed with the same property, uses it to produce a similar effect, first on the sentinels at the entrance of the hive, and then on the bees within.
In another part of his book (2nd edit. 1808, p. 202.) he relates what he himself witnessed on introducing a strange queen into a hive. The bees, greatly irritated, pulled her, bit her, and chased her away; but on her emitting the sound and assuming an extraordinary attitude, "the bees all hung down their heads and remained motionless." On the following day he repeated the experiment, and the intrusive queen was similarly maltreated; but when she emitted her sound, and assumed the attitude, from that moment the bees again became motionless.