500 THE SO-CALLED BUGONIA OF THE ANCIENTS. 



Except the silk-worm and the honey-bee, I hardly know of any insect 

 that can show an historical record equal to that of Eristalis tenax. The 

 record begins in the dusk of the xjre-hit»toric times, and continues uj) to 

 the present date. In its earliest days 1^. tenax appears like a myth, a 

 misunderstood and unnamed being, praised for qualities which it never 

 possessed, a theme for mythology in ])rose and poetry; later on, the bub- 

 ble of its glory having burst, it gradually settles into a kind of com- 

 mensalism with man, it obtains from him " a local habitation and a 

 name," it Joins the Anglo-Saxon race in its immense colonial develop- 

 ment, it vies with it in prodigies of fecundity, and at present renders 

 hitherto unrecognized services in converting " atrocious stuff" into 

 pure and clean living matter. 



I close this chapter on the Bugonia-cvAZii with the moral of it, con- 

 tained in another sentence from Goethe : 



" Mail sielit iiur wa« man weiss." ' 



Heidelberg, June, l<S9d\ 



We see ouly what we know. 



