FERTILIZATION IN THE HONEY-BEE WHTATE. 
pletely hidden from the outside. Under these conditions these 
chitinous plates could not act, as Shafer infers, as a means: of 
holding the organ in the vagina, nor would they serve to prevent 
the escape of seminal fluid when the queen had freed herself 
from the drone. This fluid, unless otherwise prevented, could 
return by the route by which it entered, through the ejaculatory 
duct; for the same fullness of the bulb wall opposite these plates 
which allows them to evert (emphasized by Shafer) would allow 
the ejaculatory duct to extend back through the bulb without 
being compressed by them. In a former paper (p. 267) pre- 
vention of the escape of spermatic fluid has been ascribed to the 
immediate coagulation of the mucus from the accessory gland 
upon exposure to the air. 
Assuming this explanation to be correct, the second point in 
question, the extent of the eversion of the drone’s copulatory 
organ, resolves itself into the following: granting that the usual 
process results in complete eversion of the bulb and end of the 
ejaculatory duct (fig. 2, C), is it possible for a queen to be fertil- 
ized by a drone whose organ has not been extruded so far (fig. 2, 
B)? Of the eight queens to be described, three still carried the 
drone organ when killed, and of these three, in two the bulb was 
fully everted. In one, however, it was apparently not. One 
of the oviducts of this queen was normally distended with sperm 
and mucus, the other was slightly distended, and the bulb of the 
penis retained a mass of secretion sufficient to distend the lesser 
one as fully as the other. How this queen retained the organ 
securely enough to twist it off from the drone, or even how the 
connection was made at all, it is difficult to say; unless one as- 
sumes, as described elsewhere, that the section of the penis tube 
immediately preceding the bulb (fig. 2, a) failed to turn inside 
out, and held in the vagina as the end of the ejaculatory duct 
is assumed to do in complete eversion. This might result if 
the force of the sexual act were insufficient to cause the eversion 
of the bulb, which if it took place would cause the withdrawal 
of this section of the tube from the orifice of the vagina. One 
assumes in this case that the everting end of the penis (a) enters 
the vagina as the pneumophyses open it; and then withdraws 
