— 202 — 



the Ptolemies, seems to have been a ceiitre of this superstition. 

 Tlie principal author quotecl is Antigonus Caristius, wlio livecl 

 in the third century B. C. ; he relates that » in several places 

 in Egypt, when an ox is bnriecl in snch a way that his 

 horns protrude, and these horns are sawn off, bees are said 

 to emerge, the pntrefying ox being transformed into these 

 insects. » The reason alleged for this exjDeriment was that 

 the yearly inundation of the Nile often destroyed the hives, 

 and rendered the renewal of the stock necessary! (Comp. Joh. 

 Beckmann; Antig. Car. hist. mirab. collectanea. Lipsiae 1791, 

 p. 36). 



Varrò, « the most learned of the Romans », as he was 

 called, a contemporary of Cicero, in his book on Agriculture 

 {JDe re rustica^ book II, Ch. 3) says: Scio ex hoc putrefacto 

 nasci dulcissimas apes, melli matres, a quo eas Graeci « bu- 

 gonas » appellant (« I know that from this rottenness, the 

 sweetest bees are born, the mothers of honey, which the 

 Greeks called bugonas > ). Elsewhere (book III, Ch. 6, p. 16) 

 he says: « The bees are produced partly from hives, partly 

 from the bodies of rotten oxen. » Ovid has a verse upon the 

 Bugotiìa, and refers to it as well known ( « cognita res usn » 

 Metani. XV, verses 365-366, also in the Fasti). 



The naturalist Pliny (XI, 20) says: « When bees are 

 lost, they can be reproduced from the fresh intestines of oxen, 

 biiried in diìng. » 



The various methods for the artificial production of bees 

 excite the merriment of Francesco Redi (Esperienze etc. p. 52): 

 « This is one of tht)se lies (menzogne), he says, which hap- 

 pened to be invented by somebody in olden times and were 

 afterwards repeated by others, as if they were true, and copied 

 again, and each time with some addition; different authors 

 do not relate the same thing in the same way about that 

 marvellous generation, and are sometimes not consistent with 

 themselves. « Columella declares that he does not care to 

 waste his time with such things, and adheres to the opinion 



