NOTES AND MEMORANDA. 89 



does not differ essentially from that of the majority of female insects, 

 to which no one has ever thought of ascribing the power of acting at 

 pleasure upon phenomena which seem to be absolutely removed from 

 the influence of the will." The theory was founded, at least in part, 

 upon the supposed fact that an Italian queen, fertilized by a German 

 drone, would produce hybrid workers and queens (females) and drones 

 exactly like herself. M. Perez, however, disputes this on the ground 

 of observations made upon a hive, the queen of which, the daughter 

 of an Italian of pure race, had been fertilized by a French drone. 



Some of the workers were Italian, others French, others mixed in 

 various proportions of the two races. Among the males also were 

 some as dark as those of the French race, although, according to the 

 above theory, they ought all to have been of the Italian race, like 

 their mother. He therefore examined 300 of the drones, and found 

 151 were pure Italian, 60 were hybrids of various degrees, and 83 were 

 French. 



Hence he regards it as evident that the drone eggs, like those of 

 the females, are fertilized by contact with the fluid stored up in the 

 seminal receptacle of the queen, and that Dzierzon's theory must fall 

 to the ground. 



On this paper M. A. Sanson in a later number * comments as 

 follows : — 



In a recent note M. J. Perez is inclined to throw doubt on the 

 phenomenon of parthenogenesis amongst bees, taking his stand on a 

 certain interpretation of facts of heredity which he has observed. I 

 have reason to be surprised at seeing him qualify as an hypothesis a 

 fact, experimentally proved a great many times, and of which the 

 direct verification is most easy. A proof of this fact was submitted 

 to the Academy in 1868. f I presented a comb containing only cells 

 of workers filled with males or drones developed in these cells. 

 M. Bastian and I obtained it at Wissembourg, by making a queen 

 bee lay in it, whose seminal receptacle was destitute of spermatozoids. 

 I presented also, at the same time, some workers lodged in male cells, 

 and hatched from eggs laid by a fecundated queen bee who had no other 

 cells at her disposal. The object of our experiments was to examine 

 into the theory advanced at that time by Laudois relating to the 

 mode of development of the sexes. All bee-keepers know that the 

 old queens, who become drone-mothers, that is, who no longer lay any 

 but male eggs, have exhausted their provision of spermatozoids. 

 . When their seminal receptacle is examined under the Microscope, it 

 contains nothing but a perfectly transparent liquid. It is also known 

 that the temperature of a young fecundated queen has only to be 

 lowered to the degree which kills spermatozoa, to render her imme- 

 diately a drone-mother. The young queens who have not paired, 

 and the workers who sometimes lay in hives which have lost their 

 queen by accident, and which are called " orphans," only lay male 

 eggs. 



These are the facts. It is easy to show, moreover, that the inter- 



* ' Comptes Rendus,' vol. Ixxxvii p. G59. 

 t Vol. Ixxvii. p. 51. 



