A Plea for Prodigies 



the great authority on flies, has come to the 

 rescue of this venerable myth. The ancients, 

 it seems, did mistake a fly for a bee ; but the 

 fly was not the harmful and scarcely necessary 

 bluebottle, but a very different species, the drone- 

 fly. This insect is extremely like a bee, and is 

 believed to find the resemblance serviceable as 

 a protection. The present writer in his school- 

 boy days has, he regrets to say, often made use 

 of it for a practical joke on the feminine members 

 of the household, and it may be mentioned, as 

 a caution to youths similarly inclined, that people 

 have been known to mistake the bee for the fly, 

 with unpleasant results to themselves. This fly, 

 the Baron informs us, deposits its eggs on car- 

 cases, and the maggots, developing in the putrid 

 mass, result in a brood which might easily be 

 mistaken for genuine bees. This explanation 

 of the old story receives further support from 

 the fact that there are nearly-allied flies which 

 resemble wasps, thus showing how these crea- 

 tures were supposed to originate from horse- 

 flesh. 



After this we may well feel that some explana- 

 tion may be found for the wildest creations of 

 the unscientific imagination in days gone by. 

 Suppose Herodotus, who has so often been 

 scoffed at by commentators who knew far less 

 natural history than he did, had received rumours 



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