13 
bees of Samson, as if the ancients (Grecks and Romans) knew 
anything about Samson! 
Rept, a contemporary of Swammerdam, stood on the same 
level with him on the question of the Bugonia. Both were ad- 
versaries of spontaneous generation, and nevertheless both 
misunderstood the story of Samson. Redi (Esperienze etc. p. 58) 
accepts the interpretation of Bochart. And with regard to the 
relation of bee-like flies, and especially of H. tenax to the Bu- 
gonia, both seem to have been in the dark. My Neapolitan 
edition of Redi (1778) contains a supplement by Girolamo 
Gaspari from Verona (p. 149), an observer of Oestridae and 
correspondent of Vallisnieri, who states quite distinctly that 
Redi only denounced the error, and that it was Vallisnieri who 
explained its origin. There is no doubt that it is to the latter 
that belongs the honor of having pointed out that the vagaries 
of the ancients about oxen-born bees were not mere inventions, 
but had some basis in facts. (1) As early as 1700 Vallisnieri 
published his ,Dialogues between Malpighi and Pliny in which 
he showed that what the ancients took for oxen-born bees, 
were those bee-like hairy flies that breed under the skin of 
cattle (our Hypoderma), or escape from the throat of deer 
(Cephenemyia), or are seen about horses, asses and mules 
(Gastrophilus). Vallisnieri repeats these statements in his Ks- 
perienze, p. 148. But this discovery of Vallisnieri was not up 
to the mark yet; what he discovered were Oestridae, and not 
E. tenax. And yet, that Vallisnieri knew LF. tenaz, may be in- 
ferred from his words: ,that stout and stupid fly, which is bred 
from certain worms, provided with a tail, and sometimes called 
aquatic intestines, (intestint acquatici) * (Esperienze etc. p. 149). On 
the same page Vallisnieri gives instances of the confusion be- 
tween the terms of dees and flies in ancient anthors, and quotes, 
among others, Lampridius, Life of Heliogabalus, Ch. 26. I trans- 
late this passage of Lampridius: ,As a gift to his parasites, 
(1) In the Suppl. V I have shown that traces of this progress in knowledge 
are found even in earlier authors. 
