7 
experiments were repeated for centuries without causing any 
apparent disappointment. (1) The curiosity about witnessing 
the miracle of spontaneous generation may have contributed in 
encouraging the people in their perseverance. 
The various manipulations recommended by ancient authors 
for the process of the Bugonia may be classed into two groups; 
one of them required the carcases, or only portions of them, to 
be buried; according to the other method, they were shut wp in 
a box, or a shed, or a chamber. The former method may have 
been the cheapest, and was perhaps more used by country- 
people; the other, more expensive, proved, after repeated ex- 
periments, to be the more certain. 
In Egypt they used to bury the ox with projecting horns, 
through which, after they were cut off, bees would emerge 
(Antigonus Carystius). The process mentioned by Ovid, in the 
above-quoted passage, consisted likewise in a burial. Mago, 
an old African writer about agriculture (compare Supplem. X), 
contended that it was sufficient to bury the paunch of an ox; 
Pliny advised to cover it with dung etc. The process of shut- 
ting up the carcase in a box, shed, or chamber, is said to have 
been recommended by two ancient authors: Democritus and 
Varro. It was afterwards illustrated by the poetical genius of 
Virgil, in his Georgics; and we possess a still later description 
in the Geoponica (XV, 2, 21—28), (2) a work on Agriculture 
published in the tenth century. This description, attributed to 
an obscure writer Florentinus, is quite detailed, and probably 
contains the latest improvements of the art. It runs as fol- 
lows: 
Build a house, ten cubits high, with all the sides of equal dimensions, 
with one door, and four windows, one on each side; put an ox into it, thirty 
months old, very fat and fleshy; let a number of young men kill him by beating 
him violently with clubs, so as to mangle both flesh and bones, but taking care 
(1) This explanation is introduced here for the first time, because it had 
not occurred to me when I was writing my first edition. 
(2) About the Geoponica, comp. above, the List of authorities. 
