318 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



dana and E. lupicola from Norfolk; and mnntioned that lie 

 had on the previous day captured in Kent five specimens of 

 Hypercallia Christierninana. 



A paper by Mr. John Lowe, of Edinburgh, intituled " Ob- 

 servations on Dzierzon's Theory of Reproduction in the 

 Honey-bee," was read. With a view to test the truth of the 

 theory that " all eggs which come to maturity in the two 

 ovaries of a queen-bee are only of one and the same type, 

 which, when they are laid without coming in contact with 

 the male semen, become developed into male bees, but, on 

 the contrary, when they are fertilized by male semen, pro- 

 duce female bees," — from which theory, if true, we might, in 

 the words of Von Siebold, " expect beforehand that by the 

 copulation of a unicolorous blackish brown German and a red- 

 dish brown Italian bee, the mixture of the two races would 

 only be exyjressed in the hybrid females or workers, but not 

 in the drones, which, as proceeding from unfecundated eggs, 

 must remain purely German or purely Italian, according as 

 the queen selected for the production of hybrids belonged to 

 the German or Italian race," — the writer set to work to obtain 

 hybrids between Apis mellifica and A. liguslica, and also 

 between A. mellifica and A. fasciata ; and the result of his 

 experiments was that Ligurian queen-bees fertilized by P^ng- 

 lish drones and Egyptian queen -bees fertilized by English 

 drones, both produced drones which, as well as the workers, 

 were hybrid in their characters, and bore unmistakable evi- 

 dence of the influence of the male parent. From this the 

 Author drew the conclusion that the eggs of a queen-bee 

 which had been fertilized by a drone of another race, whether 

 they develope into drones or workers, are in some way 

 affected by the act of fecundation, and that both sexes of the 

 progeny partake of the paternal and maternal character or 

 race; from which it followed that Dzierzon's was not the 

 true theory of reproduction in the honey-bee. Specimens of 

 the hybrids were exhibited to the Meeting, and Mr. Smith 

 (who did not consider Apis ligustica to be specifically dis- 

 tinct from A. mellifica), after an examination of the speci- 

 mens, corroborated Mr. Lowe's statement that the hybrid 

 drones distinctly showed characters peculiar to A. mellifica 

 in combination with the characters which distinguish A. 

 ligustica and A. fasciata respectively. 



