10 
This thesis, that Eristalis tenaz alone is the cause of the 
Bugonia-craze, being given, what remains for me to do is to 
show how, at the end of those twenty centuries of inertia, the 
question about the Bugonia came up again, and after some 
uncertainty and groping, found its solution in the recognition 
of the truth, that 2. tenaz was at the bottom of it. 
A group of men, almost contemporaries, brought about that 
solution at the end of the seventeenth and in the first half of 
the eighteenth centuries, by dint of observing insects in life, 
and not by merely compiling authorities. These men were: 
Goedart (1620—1668), Blankaart (his work appeared in 1688), 
Swammerdam (1637—1680), all three in Holland; Redi (1626— 
1697) and Vallisnieri (1661—1730) in Italy, and finally Réaumur 
(1683—1757) in France. 
Gorpart (Metamorphosis insectorum etc. 1662; edition in 
Dutch 1669) gives rough, but distinct, figures of the larva, pupa 
and imago of £&. teiax (Tab. II, p. 25). He calls the larva 
vermiculus porcinus. The imago is distinctly figured as a two- 
winged fly, and the letter-press also speaks of two wings; never- 
theless Goedart calls it apis (bee). That so careful and con- 
scientious an observer should have taken a fly for a bee is out 
of the question. Swammerdam, who reproached him with this 
mistake (Bibl. Nat. Germ. ed. 1758, p. 212), changed his mind 
in another part of his work (p. 257), and took to task Dr. 
de Mey, Goedart’s commentator, as the guilty party. Goedart 
was not a classical scholar; Réaumur (vol. I, p. 29) notices it 
in a passage, which is a choice specimen of French finesse and 
urbanity: ,Ceux méme (les naturalistes) qui, par une ignorance 
peut-étre heureuse, n’étaient pas en état de lire les anciens, 
comme Goedart et M"° Mérian, ont travaillé utilement.“ It was 
the classically learned de Mey who saw in Goedart’s obser- 
vation an actual case of Bugonia; he took the Hristalis for a 
honey-bee, and eomposed a preposterous Annotation about it. 
Swammerdam, the representative of the new science, was seized 
with an almost ludicrous fit of wrath about this piece of pre- 
sumption: ,The fuss,“ says he, ,de Mey makes about this 
