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made it impossible. As the fly is remarkably like a bee, Baron 
Osten Sacken is perfectly right in supposing that the antique 
superstition about the origin of bees from rotten carcases is 
solely due to the confusion between the bee and the fly Hris- 
talis tenax. His paper in ,The Entomologists Monthly Magazine“ 
XXIII, p. 98, 1886, gave occasion to the present publication. 
This belief is therefore the foundation of Samson’s story; 
the riddle assumes that an answer to the question which it 
puts is possible for those to whom it is put. And when Samson 
says: 
Out of the eater came forth meat 
And out of the strong came forth sweetness, 
and the other party answers by another question: 
What is sweeter than honey ? 
And what is stronger than the lion? 
it shows that both parties agree in the belief that honey-bees 
are produced from carcases. Such an agreement, founded on a 
popular superstition, is the conditio sine quad non of this game 
of riddles, and, without it, the riddle would be insoluble. 
After this explanation, what shall we say of the old ex- 
pounders, one of whom, Polus, declares that he ascribes the 
miracle to the divine Providence which meant to offer Samson 
an occasion for attacking the Philistines; and another, Ephraim 
the Syriac, (Carmina Nisibena 39, 210) who sees in it a type 
-of Christ, and puts the following speech in the mouth of a 
personification of Death: ,Samson found a honey-comb in a ear- 
case! But what means this type?! Jesus offers so many types; 
I have fallen into a sea of types which represent the Resur- 
rection from the dead in all kind of images and figures. Samson 
symbolises: Out of Nhe eater came forth meat; with me it is 
just the contrary; he who was my food, became my eater, be- 
cause from Adam came the son of Man, who puts an end 
to me!“ 
