ON THE OXEN-BORN BEES OF THE ANCIENTS 
(BUGONIA), 
AND THEIR RELATION TO 
BRIS TALIS TENAX, 
A TWO-WINGED INSECT, 
BY C. R. OSTEN SACKEN. 
OXEN (1) are very useful animals, as much in 
agriculture, as in carrying burdens. They produce 
milk, they adorn altars, they embellish feasts; they 
give good food. Even dead oxen are praiseworthy 
and excellent, because from their remains originate 
bees, the most laborious of insects, which provide 
men with honey, the best and sweetest nourishment. 
AELIANUS, On the Nature of Animals, 
Book II, 57 (between the 2nd and 3rd 
Century A. D.). 
§ 1. — Introduction. 
For more than two thousand years a superstition has been 
prevalent in the minds of the masses, as well as in books, to 
the effect that, besides the usual production of honey-bees in 
hives, they originated by spontaneous generation from carcases 
of dead animals, and principally from those of oxen. Thus arose 
in Greece the term Bugonia (from fos, an ox, and yovy, pro- 
geny), as well as the expression bugencs melissae, taurigenae apes, 
that is, oxen-born bees, in the Greck and Latin literature. 
(1) For want of a better expression, I use oven“ in accordance with 
Webster’s Dictionary (under ,,Ox“): ,,The name Ow is never applied to the 
cow, or female of the domestic kind. Omen, in the plural, may comprehend both 
male and female.“ The expressions ,o«en-born“, ,,carcase-born® etc, may be 
considered bad English; but it would have been impossible for me to express 
my meaning without them. New notions require new expressions. 
1 
