THE SO-CALLED BUGONIA 01'' THE ANCIENTS. 489 



we are iiKiiiiriii;^' into is the well-kuowii intlueiicc which prevails in all 

 human matters, aud this factor is routine. 



"Thinking is difficult, and actiug accordiug to reason is irksome,"* 

 said Goethe. People see, and believe in what they see, and the belief 

 easily becomes a tradition. It may be asked. If those people had 

 that belief, why did they not try to verify it by experiment, the moie 

 so as an economical interest seemed to be connected witli it. 



The answer is that they probably did try the exi)eriment, and did 

 obtain something* that looked like a bee; but that there was a second 

 part of tlie experiment, which, if they ever tried it, never succeeded, 

 and that was to make the bee-like something produce honey. If they 

 did not care much about this failure, and did not prosecute the experi- 

 ment any further, it is probably because, in most cases, they found 

 that it was mucli easier to procure bees iu the ordinary way. Tliat 

 sucb was really the kind of reasoning which prevailed in those times 

 clearly results from the collation of the passages of ancient authors 

 about the Bugonia. There were different recipes for it; one wanted the 

 ox to be buried with projecting horns, through which, after they 

 were cutoff, bees would emerge; anothei- (and no less a. personage 

 than Pliny), contended that it is sufficient to use the entrails of 

 an ox, and to cover them with dung, etc. Florentinus, an obscure 

 writer iu the Geoponicat gives an account of the process that was 

 used by Juba, King of Mauritania: "Build a house. 10 cubits high, 

 with all the sides of equal dimensions, Avith one door, and four 

 windows, one on each side; put an ox into it, thirty months old, very 

 fat and fleshy; let a number of young men kill him by beating him 

 violently with clubs, so as to mangle both flesh and bones, but taking- 

 care not to shed any blood; let all the orifices, mouth, eyes, nose, etc., 

 be stopped up with clean and fine linen, impregnated with pitch; let a 

 quantity ol*'thyme be strewed under the reclining animal, and then let 

 windows and doors be closed and covered with a thick coating of clay, 

 to prevent the access of air or wind. Three weeks later let the house 

 be opened, and let light and fresh air get access to it, except from the 



" "Denken ist schwer, nach dera Gedachten liandelii nnbequem." Goethe. 



tTlie Geoponica, ov Work of Agriculture, was a compilation of old Greek aud 

 Eoman authors ou the same subject, ordered by the Emperor Constantiue Porphy- 

 rogeneta, aud executed iu all probability by Cassiauus Bassus, a couteniporary writer 

 (I quote from W. Smith, Diet, of Gr. aud Kom. Biogr. aud Mythol., sith voce Bassus). 

 Florentinus, to all appearances, is one of the authors made use of in the Geoponica, 

 but nothing more seems to be known about him (compare 1. c. siih voce Florentinus; 

 the statementof this article, by a different author, is not iu entire agreement with 

 that on liassus.) — Prof. A. Merx, of Heidelberg, the celebrated Syriac scholar, told 

 nic of an old Syriac translation of the Geoponica, Avhich may possibly have been the 

 channel through which the nation of the Bugonia spread eastwards. He added that 

 the Hayat el-haiwau (the Life of Animals) by Damiri (or Demiri), and other Arabic 

 works, may contain allusions to the Bugonia. It is beyond my province to follow up 

 these suggestions, but I take advantage of this opportunity to express to Prof. 

 Merx my sincere thanks for the interest he took in my research. 



