SEX. 333 



season than females ; 4. That the sexes in early life 

 cannot be distinguished, the change being brought 

 about late in life by the conditions of nutrition." l 



Mr. Thomas Meehan has made observations which 

 seem to show that " sex in plants is the result of the 

 grade of nutrition, the highest grades of nutrition or 

 vitality producing the female sex, and the lower grades 

 the male." 2 



These changes in the reproductive organs that are 

 produced by conditions of nutrition appear to be 

 analogous to those that determine the development of 

 the reproductive organs of the queen-bee. 



If a queen is destroyed or removed from the hive, 

 " the bees choose two or three from among the neuter 

 eggs (producing workers) that have been deposited 

 in their appropriate cells, and change these cells (by 

 breaking down others around them) into royal cells, 

 differing considerably in form, and of much larger 

 dimensions ; and the larvae, when they come forth, 

 are supplied with 'royal jelly ',' an aliment of a very 

 different nature from the ' bee-bread ' which is stored 

 up for the nourishment of the workers, being of a 

 pungent, stimulating character. After going through 

 its transformations, the grub thus treated comes forth 

 a perfect queen, differing from the ' neuter,' into which 

 it would otherwise have changed, not only in the de- 

 velopment of the generative apparatus, but also in the 

 form of the body, the proportionate length of the 

 wings, the shape of the tongue, jaws, and sting, the 

 absence of the hollows on the thighs in which the 



1 Popular Science Monthly, April, 1874, p. 762. 

 9 Ibid., p. 761. 



