Herein, no doubt, is to be found a clue to the whole mystery. If it was not the honey-bee—the _Apis mellifica_ of modern naturalists—which was generated from the entombed body of Virgil’s unfortunate bull-calf, what other insect, closely resembling a bee, could have been produced under those conditions? The answer has been readily given by several naturalists of our own time. There is a fly, called the drone-fly, which exactly meets the difficulty. He is so like the ordinary honey-bee that on one occasion, and that recently, he was mistaken for the genuine insect by one calling himself a bee-expert, and holding a diploma officially entitling him to the use of that name. This drone-fly would have behaved almost exactly as Virgil’s calf-bred bees are said to have behaved, and according to the various descriptions of the matter given by other writers living before and since. He would issue forth in a dense cloud immediately his natal prison-doors were opened, and he would comport himself in other ways exactly as enumerated. Finally, he would beget himself joyously to the open country, as a swarm of bees would do; and once more the Virgilian theory of bee-production would meet with its seeming verification. But having gone thus far with the drone-fly, it is difficult to resist going a little farther. We cannot leave him in the ignominious company of slaughtered oxen, but must give him his due of more lordly associations. “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.” When Samson went down to Timnath on his fateful mission of wooing, and saw the carcass by the way beset with a cloud of insects, we need not cast any doubt on his genuine belief that they were honey-bees. He propounded his riddle in all good faith, and the form of it can very well be explained as a not undue stretch of allowable poetic privilege. But that the creatures he saw hovering about the dead lion were really bees, and that Samson actually obtained honey from the carcass, is not to be accepted without the exercise of a faith that is undistinguishable from credulity. Many attempts have been made to explain away the difficulties of the problem on natural lines, but they are all alike unconvincing. There is little doubt at this time that the part of the story dealing with the honey is nothing but a deft embroidering on the original legend by some later chronicler; and that the insects which were seen about the dead lion were really drone-flies generated in the same fashion as those from Virgil’s ox.