THE ANCIENTS AND THE HONEY-BEE 11 
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 
