34 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



[Feb. 1, 1870. 



Fig. 49. 

 Vaginicola 



having in the mean time undergone fission, aud de- 

 veloped a perfect ciliated head on each part of the 

 duplicated body. 

 The specimens observed by me were found in the 

 latter part of October last, attached 

 to Char a vulgaris in a stagnant pool 

 of fresh water formed from the over- 

 flow of a canal near Winchester. If 

 this species has not hitherto been 

 described, the following description 

 may suffice : — 



— (?) ; tube or lorica crystalline, 

 urceolate about t^ iuch in length, with a valve ap- 

 parently formed of the same substance, affixed to 

 the side about i of its length from the top, and 

 moving freely on its point of attachment, closing in 

 a n inclined position over the animal on its with- 

 drawing itself into the lorica. Body about ■+> inch 

 in length, with many vacuoles, and nearly filled with 

 bright green granules. 

 Hab. freshwater on Chara, &c. 

 Winchester. F. I. Warner. 



LIGURIAN v. BLACK BEES. 



I~N my last communication I ventured, on the 

 -'- strength of the law of Parthenogenesis 

 and my own experience, to state that there were 

 no hybrid drones, — that in the commingling of 

 the Ligurian (or Alpine) and black races of bees, 

 the drones were, in respect of colour, either all Ligu- 

 rian or all black, according as the female was the 

 one or the other ; the evidence for this is, I think, 

 incontestable. From a semi-Ligurian or mongrel 

 queen, the drone offspring would of course be mon- 

 grel, following, by the same law, the mother as re- 

 gards complexion, but still, to the best of my belief, 

 not hybrids. I say to the best of my belief because 

 the case is not absolutely proven.* 



On this matter I would offer some further remarks, 

 but as I have another subject to dwell upon, I feel 

 I should be encroaching on valuable space. 



I am glad to find that the question I sceptically 

 proposed, "Are these bees distinct species at all?" is 

 likely to get well ventilated. For my own part, I have 

 no hesitation whatever in answering — no. The bees 

 before us correspond in nature and habits so closely 

 — there is no structural difference, their operations 

 are the same, and their cell-construction is identical 

 — that I cannot believe them other than varieties. 

 If a difference exists, it does not seem to me suffi- 

 cient to involve the term specific, and if the Ligu- 

 rians are superior in quality, it must be remembered 



* I use the term hylrid in the sense implied by" D. D. B." in 

 his query, and as given by Professor Huxley : " Male hybrids 

 are those which, although possessing all the external appear- 

 ance of perfect animals, are physiologically imperfect in the 

 structural parts of the reproductive elements necessary to 

 generation." 



that they are a mountain variety, hardier, bolder, 

 more vigorous. 



It surely is not at all remarkable that the hive- 

 bee, which has been in a state of domestication, like 

 the horse and the dog, and with them has un- 

 doubtedly accompanied man in his migrations for 

 thousands of years, should also, like them and him, 

 have succumbed in a measure to local influences, 

 and have been subject to variation in physical 

 characteristics more or less marked. That some of 

 these varieties should have remained locally perma- 

 nent and prolific, yet actually merging under certain 

 circumstancesjgradually one into the other,* or that 

 they should have beeu brought advisedly together by 

 ancient cultivators, is still less remarkable.f 



From careful attention, therefore, to the subject, 

 lam led to believe,— (1) That all the various honey- 

 bees of assured domesticity, the Apis mellifica, which 

 with civilization has extended itself over the princi- 

 pal part of Europe, North Africa, parts of Asia, as 

 well as North America : the Apis Hgustica of North 

 Italy, Greece, the Archipelago, parts of Syria and 

 Palestine ; the aurora-coloured bees from Flanders, 

 described by Delia Rocca, 1790'; A. fasciata of 

 Lower Egypt and Nubia; and even the A. Adansonii 

 of Senegal and Gambia, though differing from one 

 another, and even among themselves, in disposition 

 and certain physical characteristics, are but local 

 varieties of some primitive stock, and no more dis- 

 tinct species than the varieties of the human race 

 that have cultivated them through successive gene- 

 rations. (2) That these varieties would be found to 

 commingle readily and produce males resembling in 

 complexion the female parent alone: and workers 

 and queens partaking more or less of the peculiari- 

 ties of each variety, according to the energy of the 

 respective reproductive elements. 



Plymouth. J. W. Stroud. 



Symphytum tuberosum. — My specimens of 

 Symphytum tuberosum, L., referred to by "R. T., 

 M.A.," in your current number, were growing in 

 the direction he indicates, but still sufficiently re- 

 moved from Barnet to bring the habitat within the 

 county of Middlesex. I was quite unaware that my 

 communication to Science-Gossip had furnished 

 any data to the compilers of County Flora. — /. W. 

 White. 



* Had "D. D. B." seen the remainder of Hermann's ac- 

 count of the Ligurian Bee, which is not given in Neigh- 

 bour's book, this fact would have been obvious, at least in 

 the instance immediately under notice, when he adds, "The 

 farther one goes from the Alps the less handsome these bees 

 are found, as for example in Nice, until they are entirely lost 

 in Lower Italy in the black species." A similar statement is 

 made also by Spinola, who, I think, was the first to notice the 

 peculiarities of this bee, and to name it Apis ligustica in his 

 Insectorum Ligurias Species, novae aut rariores, 1806, p. 133. 



t Aristotle, B.C. 330, speaks descriptively of four kinds of 

 bees. Virgil, B.C. 35; Varro, B.C. 50; and Columella, A.D, 

 5o, give descriptions of two. 



