20 
1661, book IX, p. 43) says: .In Chang sha of Tst I saw honey- 
bees without stings, so that when trifled with upon the palms 
they were quite harmless; having no difference from flies, that 
was strange!“ This is again an evident confusion of the Lris- 
talis with a bee!. But in another, later publication, the ,Ryoan 
Ferashimas* (Mlustrated Cyclopedia of Three Systems in Japan 
and China) compiled in 1713 (new edition 1884, book LIII, 
p. 540) the distinction is already made and Lristalis is deseri- 
bed: ,a sort of fly shaped like a bee, but bigger, round and 
fat, coloured yellow and black; the worm, feeding on ordure, 
after moulting, changes into this insect. They are abundant 
in the season when turnips blossom; the nectar of herbaceous 
flowers they suck; they do no harm either by sting or by bite. 
They hum with their wings, whose sound is like saying ,Bun 
Bun‘, (which is the Japanese name of the fly)“. In his reading 
of Chinese literature, Mr. Kumagusu Minakata has not yet come 
across any passage, indicating the existence of the Bugonia- 
superstition in China, but, in his letter to me, he observes that, 
owing to the vastness of this lhterature, what he could hitherto 
master ,is in truth but a hair out of nine oxen.‘ 
In the Greek and Roman literature references to the Bu- 
gonia are very abundant. They begin with an old poet Hwmelus 
(W. Smith, Dict. of Greek and Roman Biogr. and Mythol. sub 
voce MHumelus), said to have lived in the 8 century before 
Christ, and mentioned as the author of a poém called Bugonia. 
The myth of Aristaeus, the demigod, benefactor of mankind, 
who, among other services, taught men to hunt and to keep 
bees, is the subject of the well-known episode in the Georgics 
of Virgil (IV, verses 281—559), embracing nearly 300 hexa- 
meters. The substance of the story is that Aristaeus, son of 
Apollo and of a Thessalian girl, named Cyrene, once upon a 
time lost his hives by famine and disease. In his distress he 
applied to his (now deified) mother; and through her interven- 
tion, and that of the sea-god Proteus, he was initiated into a 
mystic rite, by which swarms of bees were produced from 
slaughtered oxen. This myth was for the ancients the alleged 
