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§ 3. — The Bugonia in the literature of the world. 
The origin of the belief in the Bugonia must be sought 
in prehistoric times, when country-people, keeping cattle and 
bees, observed bee-like flies swarming about dead animals, The 
earliest appearance of the belief in literature is found in the 
story of Samson (Judges, XIV, 8, 9, R. V.) of which I have already 
spoken in the paragraph about Swammerdam. In the vineyards 
of Timnah Samson had killed a lion, and ,after a while“, on 
his way to fetch his bride, ,he turned aside to see the car- 
case of the lion: and behold, there was a swarm of bees in 
the body of the lion, and honey; and he took it into his hands, 
and went on, eating as he went“ etc. As soon as a myth is 
started, it begins to grow. The seeing of a swarm of bee-like 
flies was a fact; the finding and eating the honey was the myth 
grown out of the misconceived fact. The riddle, which Samson 
proposes afterwards, affords the proof of another fact: that the 
belief in the Bugonia was current among the people at that 
time; because, without that substratum, the riddle would not 
have had any meaning: 
,Out of the eater came forth meat 
And out of the strong came forth sweetness.“ 
The narrator of the tale arranges it so as to make it a 
preamble to the riddle: When Samson gave the honey to his 
parents he did not tell them that he had taken it from the body 
of the lion; because if he had told them, they (as believers in 
the Bugonia) would have had nothing to guess. The story there- 
fore presents a real occurrence, based upon a well-observed, 
but wrongly interpreted, natural phenomenon. 
It is curious to notice how Sam. Bocnarr (vol. II, p. 502) 
comments on this passage of the Book of Judges in order to 
meet possible objections. He admits that bees, besides their 
natural origin in hives, are produced from dead oxen, in con- 
formity to the opinion of numerous ancient authors; but he 
