And, by the way, living animals are found in substances that are
usually supposed to be incapable of putrefaction; for instance,
worms are found in long-lying snow; and snow of this description
gets reddish in colour, and the grub that is engendered in it is
red, as might have been expected, and it is also hairy. The grubs
found in the snows of Media are large and white; and all such grubs
are little disposed to motion. In Cyprus, in places where copper-ore
is smelted, with heaps of the ore piled on day after day, an animal is
engendered in the fire, somewhat larger than a blue bottle fly,
furnished with wings, which can hop or crawl through the fire. And the
grubs and these latter animals perish when you keep the one away
from the fire and the other from the snow. Now the salamander is a
clear case in point, to show us that animals do actually exist that
fire cannot destroy; for this creature, so the story goes, not only
walks through the fire but puts it out in doing so.