SUPPLEMENTS. 
Analysis of the process of the ancients for breeding oxen-born bees. 
The most complete account of the process, with all its 
latest improvements, used by the ancients for the artificial pro- 
duction of oxen-born bees from carcases, is that described in 
the Geoponica (Comp. about it my List of authorithies). (A) In 
this work, the chapter on bees (XV, 2) is connected with the 
name of Florentinus. The principal feature of the process is a 
hermetically closed shed, and in this particular the process 
agrees with those that were recommended by much older au- 
thors, Democritus and Varro, and also, as I shall show below, 
with the poetic version of Virgil. At the same time other pro- 
cesses are mentioned by ancient authors, in which, instead of 
receiving an artificial covering, the dead ox was simply. buried 
underground: either the whole ox (Antigonus Carystius, quoted 
on p. 21; the passages of Ovid, Met. XV, 365 and Fasti, I, 376, 
reproduced on p. 6 and 22), or only a portion of the ox, prin- 
cipally the paunch (Mago, quoted by Columella, comp. Suppl. X); 
(1) The Greek text of the Geoponica, is accompanied by an old Latin 
translation. Aldrovandi, p. 58—59 reproduces the description of Florentinus’s 
process in this Latin version, but with some important omissions and verbal 
changes. 
