550 Mr. John Lowe’s Observations on 
“Continued observations,” he writes, “of the hybrid 
hives also must be no less adapted to raise the veil more 
and more, to penetrate into the obscurity, and finally 
bring the mysterious truth to hight. Ifthe drone egg 
does not require fertilization, Italian mothers must 
always produce Italian drones, and German mothers 
German drones, even when they have been fertilized by 
drones of the other race.” 
This, of course, is @ priori the natural and logical in- 
ference to be drawn from the whole of Dzierzon’s theory 
as promulgated by its distinguished author ; and nothing 
can better show the great importance he himself attached 
to this point than the fact that one solitary and isolated 
instance of a deviation from this rule occurring in his 
experience, in the case of a German hybrid-mother, 
caused him to falter in the advocacy, and even to doubt 
the perfect tenability of his own theory, and this at the 
time when it was making rapid progress amongst his 
apiarian friends and brethren; so that, becoming be- 
wildered and confounded, seemingly, amidst the con- 
flictng deductions of his own experiments, he had re- 
course for an explanation to the antiquated and untenable 
theory of a bygone age, the exploded hypothesis of 
Swammerdam, namely, the vivifying action of an awa 
seminalis. Whether the interesting experiments made 
by Von Berlepsch reconverted Dzierzon, as Professor 
Siebold predicted, or whether this took place after the 
scientific experiments and investigations of Von Siebold 
himself, it does not appear; but m 1861 Dzierzon again 
reiterates and asserts his firm faith im the doctrine of 
parthenogenesis in the honey bee, and all the essential 
points of his own theory of reproduction. 
Apologizing for the length of these remarks, I have 
now to direct the attention of the Society to the results 
of my own experiments in this very interesting subject. 
Shortly after the introduction of the Italian bee (Apis 
ligustica) into England, I had become conversant with 
Dzierzon’s theory, and I hastened to get possession of a 
colony of that beautiful race. By the aid of the Italian 
bee, I thought I should be enabled to test some of the 
points asserted by Dzierzon, and which had been con- 
firmed, apparently, by so many eminent continental 
apiarians. From Mr. Woodbury, of Exeter, a well- 
known and indefatigable apiarian—to whom all scientific 
bee-keepers owe a debt of gratitude for his successful 
