196 TRANSACTIONS, NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF GLASGOW. 



cases where the drones were hybrid ; but it will be 

 sufficient for my purpose if I mention the last I 

 have noticed. 



Without knowing anything of Mr. Lowe's re- 

 searches, Professor Perez, of Bordeaux, a gentleman 

 eminently qualified as our chief authority on European 

 bees, and as an anatomist who has paid special 

 attention to embryology, to offer an opinion on the 

 matter, investigated the subject on similar lines.* 

 An Italian queen, after being mated with a common 

 drone, gave birth not only to workers of mixed 

 characters, but also to drones which partook in 

 various degrees of the characters of the ordinary 

 drones and Italian queen. After having studied 

 very attentively the specific characters of the 

 common and Ligurian forms, he fixed upon what 

 might be regarded as a normal standard of specific 

 distinctness, and grouped out a larger number, 300 

 drones, accordingly. He found that 



151 were Italians 



66 were hybrids partaking of the characters of 



the Italian and common species 

 83 were of the common mellifica form. 



Perez next reversed the experiment, that is, he 

 fertilised a common queen by an Italian drone : 

 and he found precisely the same result, viz., that 

 the drones were of a mixed nature, and not all of 

 the Ligurian type, as they ought to have been if 

 the rule that the drones are invariably produced 

 from unfertilised ova had been absolute. 



Unless these facts can be explained away, we are, 

 it appears to me, bound to modify Dzerzon's theory 

 -in brief, to admit that the drone-eggs may some- 

 times be fertilised. I say " sometimes " because I 

 am convinced that the bulk of the drones are of 

 parthenogenetic origin. The mixed drones have 

 been accounted for in two ways : 



(First) — That they were bred from workers, that is, 

 workers of three sorts — pure Italian, pure mellifica, 



* Bull, dc la &oc. d' Agriculture <le fa Gironde, 1878 & 1880. 



