46 STUDIES IN ANIMAL LIFE. 



The fact that no male Apus has yet been found 

 is not without precedent. Leon Dufour, the cele- 

 brated entomologist, declares that he never found 

 the male of the gall insect (Diplolepis gallce tinctorice), 

 though he has examined thousands : they were all* 

 females, and bore well-developed eggs on emerging 

 from the gall-nut in which their infancy had pass- 

 ed. In two other species of gall insect Cynips di- 

 visa and Cynips folii Hartig says he was unable to 

 find a male ; and he examined about thirteen thou- 

 sand. Brongniart never found the male of another 

 entomostracon (Limnadia gigas), nor could Jurine 

 find that of our Polyphemus. These negatives 

 prove, at least, that if the males exist at all, they 

 must be excessively rare, and their services can be 

 dispensed with ; a conclusion which becomes accept- 

 able when we learn that bees, plant-lice (Aphides), 

 and our grotesque friend Daphnia (Fig. 9) lay eggs 

 which may be reared apart, will develop into fe- 

 males, and these will produce eggs which will in 

 turn produce other females, and so on, generation 

 after generation, although each animal be reared in 

 a vessel apart from all others. 



While on this subject, I can not forbear making 

 a reflection. It must be confessed that our sex cuts 

 but a poor figure in some great families. If the 

 male is in some families grander, fiercer, more splen- 

 did, and more highly endowed than the female, this 

 occasional superiority is more than counterbalanced 

 by the still greater inferiority of the sex in other 



