v BELIEF AND EVIDENCE 110 



from those of oxen, whence the term Bugonia oxen- 

 born used in Greece to describe it. Vergil referred to 

 the legend in his Fourth Georgic, but the earliest appear- 

 ance of the belief in literature is found in the Biblical 

 story of Samson, who had killed a lion in the vineyards 

 of Timnath on his way to his bride : " And after a time 

 he returned to take her, and he turned aside to see the 

 carcass of the lion ; and behold there was a swarm of 

 bees and honey in the carcass of the lion." The story 

 leads up to the riddle propounded by Samson : " Out of 

 the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came 

 forth sweetness." 



Many professors of scriptural exegesis have commented 

 upon these passages, and offered explanations of the 

 appearance of the cleanly hive-bees in the carcass of a 

 lion. Linnaeus once said that the progeny of three 

 blow-flies would devour the carcass of an ox as quickly 

 as would a lion ; and on this principle, commentators 

 who insist upon literal interpretations have concluded 

 that " after a time " may mean a sufficient interval for 

 the carcass to be reduced to a clean skeleton and the 

 bees to have made a hive in it. We are not concerned 

 here, however, with exegetic difficulties, but with the 

 fact that the belief in the Bugonia legend was current 

 among the people of Samson's time. 



So far back as the latter half of the seventeenth 

 century, Swammerdam suggested that the insects 

 supposed to be bees in a decaying carcass were really 

 flies which resembled bees, but his desire for a literary 

 interpretation of a scriptural passage prevented him from 

 taking the last step that was needed. Reaumur, the 

 French naturalist, showed clearly in 1738 the resem- 

 blance between the drone-fly and the honey-bee, and 

 remarked : " such resemblances have made people 



