— 191 — 



Ali these errors woiild bave beeii avoided, if the people, 

 from the very beginning, had known how to distiiiguisli a 

 honey-bee from a bee-like fly. TJiitil this knowledge was 

 forthcoming there was no reason for iiot believiug in the 

 Bugonìa. 



Aristotle (1) knew that four-winged insects bave the sting 

 in the tail, and the two-winged ones in the front of the head; 

 and for this reason, if he ever carne in contact with Eristalis 

 tenax^ he would bave recognized a fly, and not a bee, in it. — 

 At any rate, although he was a believer in sj)ontaneons gene- 

 ration, he never mentioned the Bugonìa in his paragraphs 

 about bees. 



But after Aristotle, for a period of about twenty centuries, 

 the question of the Bugoma remained in abeyance, and the 

 belief was accepted even by men of learning. I will show in 

 the sequel that, as late as 1662, there was a Diitch savant, in 

 whose presence an E. tenax was produced from putrescent 

 matter, and who actually took it for a honey-bee, and the 

 case before him as an instance of Bugonìa! 



The thesis which I maintain is, that it is to E. tenax 

 alone, and to no otlier bee-like, or wasp-like, flies (Oestridae, 

 Helophilus etc.) that the origin of the belief in the Bugonìa is 

 due; in other words, that if this particular fly had not 

 existed, the belief would never bave arisen. E. tenax has several 

 attributes which make it preeminently fitted for assuming 

 the ròle of an oxen-born bee: 



(1) Aristoteles, Ilist. Anim. IV, 7. 4: u The wingecl ones among insects, are either 

 two-winged, like flies, or four-winged, like bees; but none of tliose whicli liave a 

 sting in tlie tail are two-winged. " 



And I. e. IV, 7, 3: n Also the ?n(/ojJS (probably Haeniatopota caecidiens) and tlie 



oestrus (Tabanus) bave a hard tongue because aU that bave no tail-sting use 



the tongue as a weapon. n 



Also in the: De partibus anim. IV, 6, 3-4, where Aristoteles says that Dilaterà 

 bave bi\t two wings, because they are lighter than Hymenoptera. I. B. Meyer, Ari- 

 stoteles Thierkuncle, Berlin, 1855, p. 209 has some criticai remarks about these 

 passages. 



