4 THE COCKROACH. 



find enough light to enable him to trace the minutiae of natural 

 objects. He was hard at work till noon, in full sunlight, and 

 bareheaded, so as not to obstruct the light ; and his head 

 streamed with profuse sweat. His eyes, by reason of the blaze 

 of light and microscopic toil, became so weakened that he could 

 not observe minute objects in the afternoon, though the light 

 was not less bright than in the morning, for his eyes were 

 weary, and could no longer perceive readily." 



Comparing Swammerdam's. account of the Bee with the use- 

 ful and amply illustrated memoir of Girdwoyn (Paris, 1876), it 

 is plain that two centuries have added little to our kuowledge 

 of the structure of this type. Much has been made out 

 since 1675 concerning the life-history of Bees, but of what was 

 to be discovered by lens and scalpel, Swammerdam left little 

 indeed to others. It is needless to dwell upon the omissions of 

 so early an explorer. Swammerdam proved by dissection that 

 the queen is the mother of the colony, that the drones are 

 males, and the working-bees neuters ; but he did not find out 

 that the neuters are only imperfect females. In this instance, 

 as in some others, Swammerdam's authority served, long after 

 his death, to delay acceptance of the truth. It is far from a 

 reproach to him that in the Honey Bee he lit upon an almost 

 inexhaustible subject. In the 17th century no one suspected 

 that the sexual economy of any animal could be so complicated 

 as that which has been demonstrated, step by step, in the 

 Honey Bee. 



Lyonnei on the Goat Moth. 



In L} 7 onnet's memoir on the larva of the Goat Moth (Traite 

 Anatomique de la Chenille qui ronge le bois de Saule, 1760*) we 

 must not look for the originality of Malpighi, nor for the wide 

 range of Swammerdam. One small thing is attempted, and 

 this is accomplished with unerring fidelity and skill. There is 

 something of display in the delineation of the four thousand and 

 forty-one muscles of the Caterpillar, and the author's skill as a 

 dissector is far beyond his knowledge of animals, w T hether live 

 or dead. The dissections of the head are perhaps the most 



* Copies dated 1762 have a plate representing the microscope and dissecting instru- 

 ments used by the author. 



