THE ANCIENTS AND THE HONEY-BEE ii 



But having gone thus far with the drone-fly, it 

 is difficult to resist going a little farther. We 

 cannot leave him in the ignominious company of 

 slaughtered oxen, but must give him his due of 

 more lordly associations. " Out of the eater came 

 forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweet- 

 ness." When Samson went down to Timnath on 

 his fateful mission of wooing, and saw the carcass 

 by the way beset with a cloud of insects, we need 

 not cast any doubt on his genuine belief that they 

 were honey-bees. He propounded his riddle in 

 all good faith, and the form of it can very well 

 be explained as a not undue stretch of allowable 

 poetic privilege. But that the creatures he saw 

 hovering about the dead lion were really bees, 

 and that Samson actually obtained honey from the 

 carcass, is not to be accepted without the exercise 

 of a faith that is undistinguishable from credulity. 

 Many attempts have been made to explain away 

 the difficulties of the problem on natural lines, but 

 they are all alike unconvincing. There is little 

 doubt at this time that the part of the story deal- 

 ing with the honey is nothing but a deft em- 

 broidering on the original legend by some later 

 chronicler ; and that the insects which were seen 

 about the dead lion were really drone-flies gener- 

 ated in the same fashion as those from Virgil's ox. 



Perhaps no better general idea is to be obtained 

 of the condition of bee-knowledge among the 

 ancients than from the writings of Pliny, the 



