16 
Porta, Simon, or Portius (1497---1554), Neapolitan, Pro- 
fessor of Philosophy in Pisa for some time; began a history of 
fishes, which remained unfinished. He did not believe in the 
immortality of the soul (Jécher, Gelehrtenlexicon). Porta (com- 
pare above, p. 24) is among those who, according to Redi, 
asserts that the dead ass produces drones and beetles, but not 
wasps. — I have not been able to verify this statement. 
Servius Honoratus, called Grammaticus, lived in the be- 
ginning of the 5th Century A. D. Wrote a commentary on Virgil. 
Bochart quotes the following passage (Redi, comp. above, p. 24): 
,»Apum sunt multa genera. Proprie tamen vocantur apes de 
bobus, fuci de equis, crabrones de mulis, vespae de asinis.“ 
Varro, M. Terentius (116—28 B. C.). Contemporary and 
friend of Cicero. Was called ,the most learned of the Romans‘, 
and composed, according to his own assertion (Gell. III, 10) 
four hundred and ninety books. It is remarkable that only one 
of his works has descended to us entire: ,, De re rustica“, in three 
books, from which we have quoted passages on p. 2, 21, 22. 
(For details comp. W. Smith, Dict. etc.) 
About the corrupt passage from Varro, II, 5 (quoted above, 
on p. 22, footnote), I find in Forcellini’s Lat. Dict. (De Vit, 1858 
—60) under Bugonia, the following statement: ,Est autem hoc 
nomine carmen ludicrum incerti cujusdam poetae, et parodia, ut 
videtur, Theogoniae, cujus meminit Varro.“ 
XI. 
Notice on Pastor Overbeck’s paper on the Bugonia (1745). 
I conclude the series of my Supplements by a curious com- 
position, which was pointed out to me by Professor Zange- 
meister, Director of the Library of the University of Heidelberg. 
It is a rather clever sarcastic parody of the attempts of certain 
theologians, at the end of the seventeenth century (Dom Calmet, 
Huet, Sam. Bochart etc.), to explain the myths of the ancient 
heathen mythology by reference to the Holy Scriptures, and 
