90 ARTIFICIAL QUEENS. 



the new nutriment may cause to grow in all directions. 

 It furnishes a surprising evidence of the slow degrees 

 by which scientific facts make their way, if not essen- 

 tial to general utility, when we consider that to this 

 day, the knowledge of this singularity in the natural 

 history of this insect, is confined almost exclusively 

 to apiarians, and even rejected hy some of them. 

 It has, however, been confirmed by so many experi- 

 ments instituted by many different individuals, that 

 no unprejudiced mind can withhold its assent from 

 its truth. Extraordinary, however, as this fact is, 

 it is not more so than many others which have not 

 attracted our particular notice, merely because they 

 are familiar to us. " If we preserve the seed of a 

 plant," says Feburier, "for a series of years, and 

 supply it with different nourishment and soil, and 

 bestow upon it different treatment from that which 

 was destined for it by nature, we destroy its powers 

 of fecundity ; the flower no longer possesses pistils 

 or stamina, petals replace them, and announce the 

 sterility of the plant/' Something analogous to this 

 holds true, it is said, in the case of one of our domestic 

 quadrupeds. We find the twin-calf, stinted as it has 

 been for room in the ovarium of its mother, arid the 

 recipient of but half the nourishment which would 

 otherwise have fallen to its share, becomes in after 

 years a barren cow. In the case of the bee, e ' the egg 

 of a worker, placed in a royal cell, only produces 

 an insect which has its powers more fully developed, 

 in proportion to the ampler space which it occupies, 

 but it acquires no new powers. The germ of the ovary 



