53 
jumped at the conclusion that there is a certain sou! in plants, 
which evolves those worms, just at it produces flowers and 
fruits! (Compare, Redi, Esperienze etc. p. 109—113). And, in- 
stead of trying to verify this hypothesis by observation and 
experiment, he uses, in support of it, the very same kind of 
arguments which he ridiculed in other authors, such as re- 
ferences to ancient writers, and superficial reasoning. Réaumur 
denounces this failure of Redi at the end of the chapter trans- 
lated by me in Suppl. IL. 
v. 
Why ancient writers, in so many passages concerning the Bugonia, 
derived the origin of hornets from carcases of horses and confused 
them with wasps. 
The earliest passage I know of, alluding to the connection 
of wasps and hornets with carcases of horses, is a fragment 
of an epigram of the poet Archelaus, quoted by Varro: the 
horse produces wasps, young bullocks — bees (compare above, 
p. 22, also Suppl. X, under Archelaus). Ovid, Nicander, Pliny, 
Aelian, Galen, Plutarch, Origen and Cardanus may be also 
quoted in this connection; (comp. Suppl. X, under these names). 
But it is evident that among these authors a confusion prevails 
between wasps and hornets, and Redi does not fail to laugh 
at it (comp. p. 24). I venture the following, very simple, ex- 
planation (I have already given it, in abstract, on p. 15): There 
is a genus of flies, commonly called gad-flies or bot-flies (Gastro- 
philus), the biology of which is closely connected with the equine 
family, horses and asses. The flies deposit their eggs on the 
outside on the animal, generally on its hairy covering; the 
horse, by licking its own skin, or that of another horse, intro- 
duces the young larvae into its stomach or into its intestines, 
where, fastened to the walls, the larvae grow up and are finally 
expelled with the dejections. Once on the ground, they soon 
change into pupae, and then into flies. All these flies have a 
bee-like appearance, brownish and hairy (comp. Brauer’s Monogr. 
