23 
Qua, dixit, repares arte, requiris, apes ? 
Obrue mactati corpus tellure juvenci: 
Quod petis a nobis, obrutus ille dabit. 
Jussa fecit pastor. Fervent examina putri 
De bove: mille animas una necata dedit. 
Ovid. Fasti, I, 876—380. 
Translation. You want to know how to replace, by art, the bees you 
lost? Cover with earth the body of the slaughtered bullock, What you ask 
from me, the buried carcase will give you. The shepherd did as he was bidden. 
Swarms rush from the rotten ox: and one extinguished life produces a thousand. 
It will be noticed that in the two passages of Ovid the 
carcases are buried, and not kept in a closed box or shed, 
which is the process recommended by Virgil and Florentinus. 
The various methods for the artificial production of bees 
excite the merriment of Francesco Redi (Esperienze etc. p. 52): 
, This is one of those lies (menzogne), he says, which happened 
to be invented by somebody in olden times and were afterwards 
repeated by others, as if they were true, and copied again, 
and each time with some addition; different authors do not 
relate the same thing in the same way about that marvellous 
generation, and are sometimes not consistent with themselves.‘ 
Columella declares that he does not care to waste his time with 
such things, and adheres to the opinion of Celsus, who contends 
that the whole race of bees will never perish, and that it is 
therefore useless to look for them in the entrails of oxen. 
Nevertheless Mago, quoted by the same Columella, teaches that 
the paunch alone of the ox is sufficient for the purpose; Pliny 
adds that it is necessary to cover it with dung etc. etc. Redi 
goes on in that style for many pages. I have shown (on p. 8 
and in Suppl. I) that all these methods have a raison d’étre be- 
hind them, and that the result of them all is the production 
of the oxen-born bee, Hristalis tenax. 
The illusion that /. tenaz was a real bee, led the ancients 
into exaggerations, connected with the habits of real bees. So 
it was contended that the ,King*. or what we now call the 
(Jueen-bee, was produced from the brain of the ox, the ordinary 
bees from its flesh; (,Aiunt ex cerebro gigni Reges, ex carni- 
