27 
of natural science during the twenty centuries which separate 
them. Aldrovandi gives a certain number of references on the 
Bugonia, and, instead of expressing an opinion about them, 
quotes a passage from Galen, which is merely an avowal of 
ignorance: 
»Cur vero ex bovis putrefactis generentur apes occulta ratio est vel Ga- 
leno testante his verbis: ,Si quispiam vero a nobis rationes (naturae) quacrat, 
eamque omnia a se ipsa doctam ex seseque discentem agere sciat. Neque enim 
quo pacto vermes in plantis gignuntur, aut ex equis bobusque vespae atque 
apes, facile nos dicere licet, verum a natura simpliciter fiunt, nam neque ayes 
docet volare quispiam, neque nos intelligere, audire, videreque.* (Galen, An ani- 
mal sit, quod in utero continetur, Ch. 5.) 
Translation: ,,How rotten oxen can produce bees, is a mystery; as Galen 
says: Anyone who inquires into nature’s ways must understand that she is her 
own teacher, as well as her own disciple. It is not easy to say how worms 
generate in plants, or wasps and bees in horses and oxen; they are spontaneous 
works of nature, just as nobody has taught birds to fly, nor ourselves to hear, 
to see, and to understand.“ 
At the end of his chapter on Bugonia, Aldrovandi (p. 60) 
reproduces a curious passage from a book ,De Sale‘ by 
Bernardinus Gomez Miedis Saguntinus (Comp. Suppl. X, Mreprs 
from Murviedro in Spain); a passage which requires an ex- 
planation. Miedis was amusing himself with watching bees at 
work, when he observed a ,thing new, never heard of, nor seen 
before, nor mentioned by any author‘ (rem novam inauditam, 
neque visam hactenus, neque ab ullo seriptore, quod sciam, 
memoriae proditam). He squeezed a drone between his fingers 
to ascertain whether it had a sting, when suddenly some liga- 
ments giving way, a well-formed reddish bull’s head was pro- 
truded, with crooked and expanded horns, and a curved pro- 
boscis. The persons present were very much astonished, and 
insisted upon Miedis repeating the experiment; whereupon he 
squeezed five more drones in the same way, and saw five more 
bull’s heads protrude from them. ,It seems therefore“, adds 
Miedis, ,that Nature, which with good reason takes great care 
of bees, shows in this miracle how they may be recovered 
when lost.“ 
