GENERAL NOTES 137 



its contents. The niotliers wliose si)ermatheca preserve^ 

 till the end a remnant of the fecundating element had 

 their last eg^^s as fertile as the tirst ; others with a 

 seminal receptacle too (piickly exiiausted ha<l their last 

 laying smitten by death. This seems to me clear as day- 

 light." 



" If ihe iinfecundated eg<»s perish without hatching, 

 those that hatch and produce drones are therefore 

 fecundated; and the (lerman theory crumbles.'' ^' \yhat 

 exi)lanation will I then give to account for the marvellous 

 facts which I have exposed? None, absolutely none. I 

 do not explain, I relate. From day to day, more skepti- 

 cal towards explanations which may be advanced to me, 

 more hesitating towards those that I might advance my- 

 self, I see more and more before me rising, in the black 

 cloud of possibilities, and enormous interrogation point.'' 



So the reason for Fabre's positive denial of the 

 Dzierzon theory of parthenogenesis lies in the non-liatch- 

 ing of the last laid eggs of some of his osmia. This looks 

 convincing. Dr. Phillips lias himself written that he 

 '^ found that many eggs laid by drone laying queens fail 

 to hatch, and in fact, are often removed by the workers.'' 

 But other facts rise before my mind which seem to indi- 

 cate a conclusion quite difterent from that given by Fabre. 



On page 13 of the American Bee Journal for January, 

 1916, I have given an experience of mj- young days which 

 impressed itself vividly, because I then knew but little 

 concerning parthenogenesis. Let me repeat the starement 

 in part : ''In my queen rearing experience it happened to 

 us once, I believe it was in 1872 or 1873, that we found 

 sale for seven first class Italian queens, very laie in 

 October. The amount offered for those queens, by a lover 

 of good stock, was so enticing that we decided, my 

 father and myself, to sell the queens, which were in very 

 populous colonies, and take the risks of being able to re- 

 place them the same season. Queens were not then to be 

 bought as readily as they are now. There w^ere still many 

 drones, as the season had been very prosperous and late 



