46 STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. 



The fact that no male Apus has yet been found 

 is not without precedent. Leon Dufour, the cele- 

 brated entomologist, declares that he never found 

 the male of the gall insect (Diplolepis gallce, tinctorice), 

 though he has examined thousands : they were all 

 females, and bore well-developed eggs on emerging 

 from the gall-nut in which their infancy had pass- 

 ed. In two other species of gall insect Cynips di- 

 visa and Cynips folii Hartig says he was unable to 

 find a male ; and he examined about thirteen thou- 

 sand. Brongniart never found the male of another 

 entomostracon (Limnadia gigas), nor could Jurine 

 find that of our Polyph&mus. These negatives 

 prove, at least, that if the males exist at all, they 

 must be excessively rare, and their services can be 

 dispensed with ; a conclusion which becomes accept- 

 able when we learn that bees, plant-lice (Aphides), 

 and our grotesque friend Daphnia (Fig. 9) lay eggs 

 which may be reared apart, will develop into fe- 

 males, and these will produce eggs which will in 

 turn produce other females, and so on, generation 

 after generation, although each animal be reared in 

 a vessel apart from all others. 



While on this subject, I can not forbear making 

 a reflection. It must be confessed that our sex cuts 

 but a poor figure in some great families. If the 

 male is hi some families grander, fiercer, more splen- 

 did, and more highly endowed than the female, this 

 occasional superiority is more than counterbalanced 

 by the still greater inferiority of the sex in other 



