6 
bring it to their hives. The syllogism stood thus: bees pro- 
duce honey; we have bees, ergo we must have honey. But it 
never occurred to them to verify the minor premise of the syl- 
logism: we have bees. The passage in Ovid’s Metamorphoses XV, 
361—368 affords us a glimpse of this kind of mental state, 
and the words ,the fact is known from experience*: (cognita 
res usu) prove that the experiment of ,making bees“ (apes 
facere) as Florentinus calls it, was often repeated: 
Si qua fides rebus tamen est addenda probatis, 
Nonne vides, quaecunque mora fluidoque calore 
Corpora tabuerint, in parva animalia verti? 
I quoque, delectos mactatos obrue tauros 
— Cognita res usu — de putri viscere passim 
Florilegae nascuntur apes, quae more parentum 
Rura colunt, operique favent, in spemque laborant. 
Pressus humo bellator equus crabronis origo est. 
Translation. If any further evidence is necessary to enhance the faith in 
things already proved, you may behold that carcases, decaying from the effect 
of time and tepid moisture, change into small animals. Go, and bury slaugh- 
tered oxen — the fact is known from experience — the rotten entrails produce 
flower-sucking bees, who, like their parents (1), roam over pastures, bent upon 
work, and hopeful of the future. A buried war-horse produces the hornet. (2) 
No doubt there were at that time some men of a sceptical 
turn of mind who, not perceiving any palpable result from the 
operation, advised the country-people not to waste time and 
money upon it, but to procure bees in the ordinary way from 
other localities, as the race of bees would never entirely run 
out. Such was the attitude of Celsus, and after him of Colu- 
mella, the author of a work on Agriculture, both of whom are 
quoted by the ancients as opposed to the practice (About Cel- 
sus and Columella compare my Supplement X, where I repro- 
duce the principal passage of Columella). 
The right understanding of the illusion in which the be- 
lievers in the Bugonia lived, affords, it seems to me, the only 
possible explanation of the, otherwise incredible, fact that the 
(1) Here Ovid, as parents, evidently means oxen. 
(2) This line 368 is explained on p. 15. 
