150 THE entomologist's record, 



r/c, apterousness and parthenogenesis, I think we may assume 

 apterousness to have come first, as a result of a habit and habitat in 

 which life could be continued for a number of generations without 

 migration of any sort. This would place some difficulties in the way 

 of pairing and especially of crossing, and so any accidental partheno- 

 genesis would have an excellent chance of establishing itself as a 

 habit. 



Another form of parthenogenesis with alternation of generations 

 occurs in the Ciinipidac, and here also the parthenogenetic brood is 

 sometimes apterous, and in some species the race has lost the 

 alternative sexual form and is entirely parthenogenetic. In all these, 

 however, the parthenogenetic individuals are essentially females, and, 

 though no males are known to exist, there is no reason in the structure 

 of the females or in their method of developing and producing their 

 eggs, why they might not be related to very possible males. 



In the liynienoptera there is another very curious form of par- 

 thenogenesis, confined to bees and probably wasps. This has been 

 most closely studied in Apu iiiellifica, and I consider that it is proved 

 that unfertilised eggs always produce drones, i.e., unfertilised eggs 

 never prove unable to develop ; on the contrary, they always develop, 

 and always into drones. A fertilised queen can lay female eggs also, 

 and so lays both kinds of eggs at will. Dr. Sharp is inclined to doubt 

 this vieAV, and says " there can be no doubt that the queen honey-bee 

 frequently produces males parthenogenetically." He thus begins the 

 argument by begging the question, begging it by a misrepresentation 

 of the facts, saying that the queen bee "frequently" lays such eggs; 

 the fact being that the queen bee invariably lays drone eggs if her fer- 

 tilisation be prevented, and does so as prolifically as she would lay 

 those of workers ( ? s) were she fertilised. It is an experiment I 

 have made myself, and is often made by bee-keepers, not always 

 voluntarily. He goes on " the error of the views we are alluding to 

 consists in taking the parthenogenesis to be the cause of the sex of 

 the individual." This is curiously unintelligible. An unfertilised 

 female always lays eggs freely ; those eggs always develop ; they 

 always develop mto males. There is no question of cause at all, 

 except in the true sense of that word — constant association. If an un- 

 fertilised egg of an unfertilised female always produces a male, then 

 we must conclude, according to all correct methods of reasoning, that 

 the male egg of a fertilised female is unfertilised, since any other con- 

 clusion demands, in philosophy, a complicated, instead of a simple, 

 solution ; and in natural history the same principle applies, since 

 natural selection would eliminate so wasteful a process, when the 

 more economical one is as efficient. He next says, " It must be recol- 

 lected that the laying of an unfertilised egg by a fertilised female may 

 be different physiologically from the laying of an egg by an unfertilised 

 female, for, though loth have as result an unfertilised egg, it is 

 possible that the fertilisation of the female may initiate processes that 

 modify the sex of the eggs produced by the ovaries, so that though 

 these may produce previous to fertilisation only male eggs, yet after 

 fertilisation they may produce eggs of the opposite sex, or of both 

 sexes. In other words, the act of fertilisation may initiate a different 

 condition of nutrition of the ovaries, and this may determine the sex 

 of the eggs produced." Dr. Sharp says all this iiiai/ be so, this must 



