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THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



men supposing that because he 

 was of doubtful origin he probably 

 was impotent. This question has 

 both a practical and scientific 

 value. Practical, because if the 

 spermatozoa from these fertile- 

 worker-drones are equally effective 

 as those from normal drones, the 

 apiarist would have at command, by 

 keeping a fertile worker oviposit- 

 ing, a stock of drones at a season of 

 the year when they would not be 

 obtainable from an impregnated 

 queen, and hence he would possess 

 the means of raising and fertilizing 

 queens either earlier or later in the 

 season than would otherwise be pos- 

 sible. The scientific interest centres 

 about the fact that it is well known 

 that amongst the higher animals 

 where a mother has borne offspring 

 the influence of its father may be 

 impressed on her progeny after- 

 wards begotten by a different par- 

 ent, as in the case of the transmis- 

 sion of Quagga marks to a 

 succession of colts both of whose 

 parents were of the species Horse, 

 the mare having been impregnated 

 by a Quagga male ; or in the in- 

 stance (many cases of which I 

 have observed amongst our own 

 poultry) of a pullet being spoiled 

 for the breeding of fancy stock by 

 some accidental misalliance. The 

 explanation of the first given phe- 

 nomenon, which rests upon the 

 statement that probably the blood 

 of the female imbibes from that of 

 the foetus through the placental 

 circulation some of the attributes 

 which the latter derived from the 

 male parent, does not seem so 

 directly to apply to the case of the 



insect as does that of the fowl, for it 

 appears to me that it may be argued 

 that in the queen-produced-drone, 

 although there is no actual spermatic 

 fusion, still the fluids of the queen 

 generally are not uninfluenced by 

 the constant presence of spermato- 

 zoa within her body, and that this 

 influence may in some unknown in- 

 direct way transfer to the drone 

 some qualities of the male with 

 which the mother mated, and it cer- 

 tainly is evident that these sperma- 

 tozoa are not cells, in the rest con- 

 dition. They not only are in partial 

 movement, but they are abundantly 

 aerated, which seems at once to 

 prove that they absorb nutrition 

 which they subsequently oxidize, 

 and that they as a consequence 

 yield products which must pass 

 into the general blood-current. On 

 the opposite side it may be urged 

 that facts known to entomologists 

 would seem certainly to indicate 

 that no such slight indirect influ- 

 ence derived from copulation as is 

 here suggested is necessary, for 

 amongst moths at least twenty gen- 

 erations of females have been pro- 

 duced without a single male indi- 

 vidual making its appearance. 

 The coming season will no doubt 

 furnish some with an opportunity 

 of testing the question by inserting 

 larvae or the testes of drones de- 

 rived from fertile workers into queen 

 cells. The marvellous persistence 

 of the spermatic cell is worthy of 

 note in passing. One taken from 

 a que^ four years old is utterly in- 

 distinguishable from another de- 

 rived direct from the drone testis, 

 although the former must have ex- 



