— 197 — 



« metimes fillecl with numeroiis flies, which he called tame 

 « hees. » Tliese tame bees were undoubtedly Eristalis tenax, 

 aud the practical joke of the Roman Emperor consisted in 

 frightening his friends with them. 



Réaumur {Mém. voi. IV. 439, quarto edit. 1738) carne a 

 little later than the above-quoted authors, and made use of 

 their Works (Compare voi. I, p. 29 and voi. IV, p. 619, about 

 Vallisnieri). It is Réaumur who, for the first time, brought 

 the Bugonìa and E. tenaoc distinctly together. At the verj' 

 beginning of the chapter: « Of two-winged flies which look 

 like bees », in which he gives the life-history of this fly, the 

 following passage occurs: « sudi resemblances (between certain 

 liymeno2)tera and diptera) have deceived people at a time 

 Avlien observations were not vjery accurate ; such resemblances 

 have made people believe that honey-bees, humble-bees, hornets 

 and wasps originate in putrescent matter upon which those 

 other flies occur. » ( « Ce sont ces mémes ressemblances qui 

 en ont impose dans des temps où l'on n'y regardait pas 

 d'assez près ; ce sont ces ressemblances qui ont fait croire que 

 les abeilles, que les bourdons, que les frelons et les guépes 

 venaient de certaines matières pourries sur lesquelles on 

 trouvait les autres mouches. » ) — This is the explanation of 

 the Bugonìa in a nutshell. 



But Réaumur was working at a time when a systematic 

 nomenclature of Entomology was not yet introduced, and 

 that prevented him from expressing his meaning with more 

 j)recision, in other words, from noming the species which he 

 meant. Thus it happened that the very important, but perhaps 

 too concise, passage which I quote, has ever since been entirely 

 overlooked, as if it had never existed. I have searched in 

 vain in Kirby and Spence, in Westwood's Introduction, (1) 



(Ij The passage in Wesiwood, Introd. II, p. 557: u Many species so inucli resemble 

 htimble bees, wasps and other Diptera, that they are constantly mistaken for them 

 by the inexperienced r< contains no reference whatever to the Bugonìa. 



