— 201 — 



It is very probable tliat mauy other instali ces of Bug orna 

 occur in the orientai literature, but it is beyond my province 

 to look after theiii. In my scaiity reading of sncli authors, I 

 found oiily oiie instance which seeiiis to poiiit that wa3^ 

 Massoudi (died 955 in Cairo) in bis « Golden Meadows » 

 (translation by Barbier de MejTiard and Pavet de Courteille, 

 Paris, 1861, voi. Ili, p. 233) relates a conversation wliicli took 

 place in Arabia and of which this is a fragment: « Had the 

 bees which produced this honey deposited it in the body of 

 a large animai, asked Yiad ? — The surveyor answered: Hea- 

 ring that there was a hive iiear the seacoast, I sent people 

 to gatlier the honey. They told me that they found at that 

 place a heap of bones, more or less rotten, in the cavity of 

 which bees bave deposited the honey that tlie}^ brought with 

 them. » 



In the Greek and Roman literature references to the Bk- 

 gonìa are very abundant, They begiii with an old poet Eume- 

 liis (W, Smith, Dici, of Greek and Roman Biogr. and Mythol. 

 sub voce Etimelus)^ said to have lived in the 8*^^ century 

 before Christ, and mentioned as the author of a poém called 

 Bugoma. The niyth of Aristaeus, the demigod, benefactor of 

 mankind, who, amoiig other services, taught men • to hunt 

 and to keep bees, is the subject of the well-known episode in 

 the Georgics of Yirgil (IV, verses 281-559), embracing neaiiy 

 300 hexameters. The substance of the story is that Aristaeus, 

 son of Apollo and of a Thessalian girl, naiiied Cyreiie, once 

 upoii a time lost his liives by famine and disease. In his 

 distress he applied to his (iiow deified) mother; and through 

 her intervention, and that of the sea-god Proteus, he was 

 initiated into a mystic rite, by which a swarm of bees was 

 produced from a slaughtered ox. This myth was for the 

 ancients the alleged origin of the Bugoma. Egyj)t, duriiig 



Eristales were uot bees, and it is wortliy of observation tliat, when resting, the 

 Eristalis tenax, and probably the whole genus, heave their bodies up and down as 

 bees do, as if they were panting. " 



