BUGONIA MYTH, also °Bugonia craze' and °Bugonia superstition' For more than 2,000 years a superstition has prevailed among the masses that besides the usual production of honey-bees in hives, they originated by spontaneous generations from the carcasses of dead animals, and chiefly from those of oxen. Thus, says Osten Sacken, arose in Greece the term Bugonia (from Bops ox; and rovli progeny) as well as the Latin names Bugenes melissae or Taurigenz apes, "oxen born bees.° Greeks, Carthaginians and Romans spoke of the Bugonia as an every-day occur rence. The poet Archelaus calls them the °fac titious progeny of a decaying This super stition has also prevailed in northern Africa and some parts of Asia; it continued to exist through the Middle Ages and survived till the 16th and 17th centuries, being mentioned by Redi, Aldrovaldi (1602), while Melanchthon regarded it as a divine provision. The orig inal cause of this delusion, which has been finally exploded by Osten-Sacken, lies in the fact that a fly which mimics the honey-bee in shape and its hairy clothing (Eristalis tenax, of the order Diptera), and which breeds in the carcasses of animals, has always been mistaken for the honey-bee. It is a true fly, with only
one pair of wings and no sting, and is a little stouter and larger than a honey-bee. Its larva is the °rat-tailed maggo0 that lives in open cesspools, sewers, etc.., and decaying carcasses on which the corrupt liquid forms during the secondary stage of putrescence. The Bugonia myth is, as shown by Osten-Sacken, the founda tion of Samson's riddle; the supposed honey bee issuing from the lion's carcass was evi dently the Eristalis fly. This insect is now distributed over a greater part of the world and is abundant in the United States. It was first detected at Cambridge, Mass., in 1875 by Osten-Sacken himself. Consult Osten-Sacken on the Oxen-born Bees of the Ancient (Bugo nia) and their relation to Eristalis tenax.