The determiuiitiou of sex in animal development. 727 



German queens into Italians swarms ^). The ultimate result of the 

 procedure is the same, whether it relate to an Italian (Ligurian) or to 

 a German queen; but, as the drone-eggs are not as a rule fertilised, 

 in the first instance the drones are not of mixed blood, that is, they 

 exhibit all the characters of the maternal line. 



DziERZON had such "bastard-hives". In one of two such, where 

 the queen was a pure German bee, there suddenly appeared among 

 the drones some few ("einige wenige") of a brilliant golden hue. These 

 were, of course, "bastards" or crosses. This unexpected and sur- 

 prising result naturally led Dziekzon to gravely doubt the truth of 

 his own theory, while von Siebold, Baron von Berlepsch and others 

 thought, that it could be explained away. They supposed, that the 

 queen in question was not of pure German blood: a curious, even 

 lame, apology considering the practical knowledge of bees possessed 

 by DziERZON, and not forgetting the fact, that the practice ^) was only 

 of recent origin ^). The fertilised drone- egg examined by Weismann 

 furnishes the complement to Dzierzon's results, which, as already 

 mentioned, have been since obtained by Dickel, Mulot, and others, 

 experimenting in the converse order. If drone-eggs be not as a rule 

 fertilised in bees, because they be now generally incapable of fertili- 

 sation, Dzierzon's case is readily explicable. There is not the smallest 

 chance of escaping from the conclusion, that these few eggs had been 

 fertilised. In all probability they had undergone fertilisation, because 

 smaller sperms had been able to enter them through the micropylar 

 apparatus. The result, so far as concerned the sex, was not affected 

 by this : the offspring were still drones, because the products of male- 

 eggs; but they were "hybrids" or crosses, because the progeny of an 

 Italian father and of a German mother. 



Two interesting articles relating to the Dzierzon theory are: 

 J. Perez, Memoire sur la ponte de l'Abeille reine et la théorie de 

 Dzierzon, and A. Sanson, Note sur la parthénogenèse chez les Abeilles, 

 both in: Ann. Sc. nat, V. 7, Zool. 1878. 



1) This was done, apparently, because of the more brilliant golden 

 colouring of the Italian or Ligurian bees. 



2) Only several years later were Italian (Ligurian) bees first in- 

 troduced into England. 



3) As will presently appear, a similar far-fetched explanation is 

 offered by von Siebold for like unwelcome and awkward results in the 

 case of Nematus ventricosus. 



