24.0 RELATION OF ANTS 
most fully confirmed.* One day, in 
November, anxious to know if the Yel- 
* Although these insects are both oviparous 
and viviparous, yet this is not the greatest singu- 
larity in their history, for they will produce, as 
fully confirmed by Bonnet and other celebrated 
naturalists, several young in succession, without in- 
tercourse with the male insect. The common gnat, 
it is asserted, will produce young, and these, in 
their turn, will give birth to others, down to the 
sixth generation, without further intercourse with 
the male. Huber, the father of our present 
author, so well known to us from his extensive dis- 
coveries in natural history, thinks, that one im- 
pregnation is sufficient to render fertile all the eggs 
which a queen bee may produce in the whole 
course of her life, usually about two years. And 
Mons. Audibert has known a female spider produce 
young, for several successive generations, from one 
single impregnation of the male. The circumstance 
of the Aphides, or Pucerons, being oviparous or 
viviparous, seems to depend upon the prevailing 
temperature. Mr. Curtis having remarked the 
same species to be oviparous in the open air, which 
when sheltered from the wind, in a green-house, 
was viviparous. The wood-louse, it has been re- 
marked, sometimes produces its young in the state 
of an egg, sometimes brings them forth per- 
fectly alive. Redi also mentions a similar cir- 
cumstance, in his work on the generation of 
insects, in reference to some of the flies he des. 
