254 Dr. F. Plateau on the Production of the Sexes in Bees. 
deceives himself in ascribing the production of males to in- 
sufficiency of nourishment; but would not the intimate com- 
position of this nourishment have an influence? Given a 
very young worker-larva, the genital organs of which may 
equally become male or female, as is indicated by the herma- 
phrodite bees, since a special nourishment may make of it a 
queen, according to Schirach* and the bee-keepers, one is led 
to assume, until ¢ncontestable evidence to the contrary is ob- 
tained, that the food may also force the male reproductive 
organs, which exist in a latent state, to become developed to 
the exclusion of the others. 
Would not the form of the cells also play its part? for it is 
certainly not without motive that the lids of the male cells are 
convex. 
Permit me to add a few words with regard to the very 
recent investigations of MM. Sanson and Bastian, which, far 
from invalidating those of M. Landois as those authors think, 
only serve to confirm them, in my opinion. 
MM. Sanson and Bastian} cut away from a male cell the 
bottom part which bears the egg, remove the bottom of a 
worker-cell, and substitute for it the preceding piece, which 
they fix by passing a hot needle along its margins. 
Like M. Landois and M. Bessels, who have made analogous 
experiments, MM. Sanson and Bastian remove the queen, so 
as to avoid mistaking for the eggs which they have placed 
artificially others subsequently laid by the female. 
The nimety-three male eggs introduced by the method just 
described were regularly expelled by the workers, from which 
MM. Sanson and Bastian conclude that the experiments of 
M. Landois are erroneous. 
But we may remark that the process employed by this last- 
mentioned observer is entirely different. Knowing well that 
the worker-bees promptly cleanse the cells of all foreign 
bodies, he carefully avoided mutilating the cells after the 
fashion of MM. Sanson and Bastian, whose handiwork, which 
would certainly be very coarse for bees, would be immediately 
recognized by them. He delicately removed the egg with a very 
small fragment of wax, and stuck it into the interior of the 
new cell, by means of this little fragment, in the most natural 
position possible. Under these conditions the author saw the 
eggs of workers transported into male-cells give birth to 
drones. 
MM. Sanson and Bastian introduced into an artificial hive, 
* Histoire Naturelle de la Reine des Abeilles, Trad. Blassiére, 1771, 
. 45. 
+ Comptes Rendus, tom. Ixvii. p. 51. 
