402 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



standing the contrary assertion hy many eminent naturalists. Tbey are 

 governed by immutable laws from which it is impossible for them to 

 swerve or deviate. He says : 



TIio evidences of design are not less perfect iu the regular worldngs of the honey- 

 bee. They are reducible to certain rules that are as unvarying as the laws govern- 

 ing the mathematical sciences, for it is but reasonable to conclude, from the known 

 regularity of such of their peculiarities as we have been able to comprehend, that such 

 as have been considered so irregular as to induce the belief that they were the result 

 of reason, are governed by the same immutable laws. 



Wo tind in every normal colony of ].)ees one bee called generally a queen, a name we 

 consider unfortunate, as it conveys a wrong impression of the office she performs in 

 the hive. She is simply the mother bee, with no attribute of royalty, and exercises no 

 control over anything therein. She has certain organs called ovaries, in which eggs 

 are produced in a manner not substantially different from the seeds in the capsules of 

 the poppy, or in the fruit of the tomato. Under pertain conditions the eggs grow, and 

 when perfected in size and elements, they are cast off like seeds and are ejected into 

 cells. If the queen is perfect she has a little sac, which has been named spermatheca, 

 in which is contained the seminal lluid. The eggs, when being laid, iu passing its 

 mouth absorb small particles or filaments of this fluid, through minute holes, and are 

 thus said to be fecundated. In a normal colony such eggs always produce worker-bees, 

 and although from the same eggs queens may bo produced, it is only done when there 

 is some derangement in the jiroper balance of the hive, and consequently is abnormal. 



The writer treats of the general cause of the production of drones 

 and queens, of the parthenogenesis and agamic reproduction of bees, 

 how the queen starts her brood-nest, bee-bread; the life of a bee, the 

 effects of want of room, &c. 



Annaxs of Bee Culture for 1872 : A Bee-Keeper's Year-Book, containing communi- 

 cations from the best American Apiarians and Naturalists. By D. L. Adair, Ilawes- 

 ville, Kentucky. 8vo, 64 pages. John P. Morton & Co., Louisville, Ky., 1872. 



Among the more important articles in this pamphlet the following arc 

 worthy of enumeration : " The Genesis of the Honey-Bee," by f>. L. 

 Adair 5 "Fertilizing Queens in Confinement," by Mrs. E. S. Tupper; 

 "Apiculture in Agricultural Colleges," by Professor A. J. Cook; " The 

 South as a Bee Country," by S. W. Cole ; " What are the most desirable 

 Improvements in Bee Culture *? " by Charles Dadant ; " The Essentials 

 of Bee-Keeping," by Dr. Jewell Davis ; " Why newly-hived Swarms 

 desert," by E. Gallop ; and the " Size of Bees and their Cells," by D. L. 

 Adair. 



Healthy Houses : A handbook to the history, defects, and remedies of drainage, 

 • ventilation, warming, and kindred subjects. By William Eassie, C. E., F. L. §*., F. 

 G. S., &c., lato assistant-engineer iu the Crimean War. 224 pp., r2mo. New York : 

 D. Appleton & Co., 1872. 



This is a very valuable little work, and should be in the hands of 

 every one who contemplates erecting a house for a home. It is profusely 

 illustrated with all the improved designs for drainage, heating, and 

 ventilating. The work is not given forth by the author as an original 

 production ; it is simply intended as a record of facts — of acquired ex- 

 periences and established inventions in relation to house construction, 

 given under the impression that they are required by the annually in- 

 creasing number of persons driven to build homes, or to remedy defects 

 in those built for them by others. The author, in his introductory 

 chapter, gives the following description of unhealthy residences: 



A residence in which unhealthiness reaches about its maximum may bo said to be 

 one which is built on a damp site with higher ground behind pouring down its waters 

 against walls without areas — walls innocent of a damp-proof course to arrest the rising 

 wet — and walls, likely enough, also exposed by insufficient thickness to driving rains. 

 It may be in the neighborhood of low-lying fields, uudng, unditched, undrained, or 

 "with the tiles long since choked up. The rooms througliout are low, with a hap- 

 hazard ventilation, insufficiently furnished with windows, and with pcrhax)s too 

 many doprs. The main staircase is without a lantern vent, or the wall there is pierced 



