THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 41 



paper on the development of the sexes in insects, also 

 combats the views of Dzierzon as to the parthenogenesis of 

 bees. He maintains that the sex of the bee depends on the 

 character not of the eg^, but of the nourishment. In support 

 of this he asserts that he has removed eggs from drone-cells 

 and placed them in those of workers, and that invariably the 

 grubs hatched from them have produced, not drones, but 

 ordinary workers. He also refers to the well-known possi- 

 bility of developing young worker-larvae into queens, which, 

 however, I need hardly observe is not a case of change of 

 sex; and also the difficulty presented by the cross between 

 the common and the Italian bee. When, however. Dr. 

 Landois observes that the females of insects require a longer 

 time for their development than the males, on account of 

 their more complete development, he forgets that in the hive 

 bee the queen comes to maturity in sixteen days, while the 

 workers require twenty-one, and the drones twenty-four. 

 Of course, if Dr. Landois were correct in his statement that 

 the sex of an insect depends upon its nourishment, it follows 

 that it must be undetermined even until some Lime after the 

 hatching of the egg. No one indeed has yet ascertained 

 that, in the case of the bee, the sex is determined in the 

 embryo, but from analogy it is most probable that this is the 

 case. 



Blind Coleoptera. — M. Lespes, in the ' Comptes Rendus,' 

 has a memoir on blind Coleoptera. He has examined the 

 nervous system of Aphsenops Leschenaultii, of Adelops 

 pyrensDus and Pholenou Querilhaci, of Claviger Duvalii, and 

 of Langelandia anophthalma. He finds not only the optic 

 nerve has disappeared, but also that the brain itself is pro- 

 foundly altered, for as he expresses it, " Les ganglions cer6- 

 broides, au lieu de former une sorle de masse iransversalement 

 disposee dans la tete, out la forme de deux corps ovales 

 allonges places presque parallelement." 



Palceozoic Insects. — In the ' Geological Magazine ' for 

 September last is a short but interesting paper by Mr. 

 Dawson on palaeozoic insects. The first belongs to the 

 carboniferous period. Insects representing the orders Neu- 

 roptera, Orthoptera and Coleoptera were long ago observed 

 in the coal-fields of England and Westphalia. Until last year, 

 however, though the coal-beds of Nova Scotia are rich in 



