NOTICES 
ON SOME 
OF THE AUTHORITIES CONSULTED. 
This List contains the principal authorities only of which 
I have made use, especially such about which I wished to 
introduce some explanatory remarks. Authorities of minor impor- 
tance are either mentioned in foot-notes, or in the Supplem. X. 
In the Index on pages XII—XIV all the authors quoted are 
alphabetically enumerated, with the corresponding references to 
the pagination. 
The Geoponica or Work on Agriculture, is a compilation 
of old Greek and Roman authors on that subject, ordered 
by the Emperor Constantine Porphyrogeneta, and executed in 
all probability by Cassianus Bassus, a contemporary writer in 
the 10th century A. D. This work contains a chapter devoted 
to the artificial production of bees, which is attributed to Floren- 
tinus, an author who must have lived in, or before, the 10th 
century A. D., but about whom nothing else is known. (Comp. 
W. Smith, Dict. of Gr. and Rom. biogr. and mythol., under Bassus 
and Frorentinus.) Professor A. Merx, of Heidelberg, the cele- 
brated Syriac scholar, told me of an old Syriac translation of 
the Geoponica, which may possibly have been the channel through 
which the notion of the Bugonia spread eastwards. He added 
that the Hayat el-haiwan (the life of Animals) by Damiri (or 
Demiri), and other Arabic works, may contain allusions to the 
Bugonia. 
