65 
(edit. Bekker, I, 626a), and the peasants of Syria had ascer- 
tained by experience, that living bees eject the dead ones from 
the hives, that they are very cleanly, and that they even emit 
their dejections in flying (627, 11). With a knowledge of 
these facts, the Syrian translator changed the ,carcase* into a 
»skeleton*, although it is difficult to understand why bees should 
live in a skeleton (1). 
This was one of the ways resorted to in order to remove 
the difficulty. 
The exegetic conscience, however, was not quite satisfied 
with this expedient. It would be a grand thing to be able to 
save the credit of the narrative by proving that bees, in some 
cases, do get at ,carcases‘*, and so be rid of the objectionable 
skeleton! According to Polus (2), it was the Jesuit Lorinus of 
Avignon (1559—1634), and even before him Alphons Tostatus, 
Bishop of Avila (f 1454), who came to the rescue with the 
easy remedy of a distinguendum est. The urban bees are well- 
educated, and therefore cleanly, but the wild bees are much 
less fastidious. Another Jesuit, however, Bonfrére (1573—1643) 
declares this to be pure sophistry, for which no good authority 
could be found. But we have to take note of it here for a 
particular reason, which I shall presently explain. 
In view of these attempts at interpretation it must be borne 
in mind that the ancients believed bees to originate from car- 
cases, like the fleas bred by spontaneous generation, according to 
the utterance of the carrier in Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Pt. I: 
Your chamber-lie breeds fleas like a loach (3), 
where loach is meant for a small prolific fish. 
(1) The statement of Aristotle passed also into the Latin literature, the 
cleanliness of bees being known to Columella 9, 5 and to Pliny, N. H., 11, 21, 
as Polus says in his Synopsis Criticorum (Merx). 
(2) Polus, Matth. a non-conformist preacher in London, who was obliged 
to leave England under Charles II, and died in Amsterdam in 1679, He pub- 
lished a Synopsis Criticorum, a compilation of all exegetes of the Scriptures, 
and other works (Jécher, (relehrtenlexicon). 
(3) The translator into German, Schlegel, renders this passage: breeds 
fleas like the spawn of a frog. Loach etymologically is related to the German 
9) 
