234 INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



that the males fertilize the eggs after they are de- 

 posited in the cells, in the same way as male fish 

 fecundate the spawn which has been previously de- 

 posited amongst sand or gravel, a notion that also 

 struck Swammerdam, who asserts the same of the 

 day-flies (Ephemeridce)* '. In 1777, Mr. Debraw, an 

 apothecary at Cambridge, made some observations 

 which appeared strongly to countenance the opinion. 

 Having discovered, at the bottom of cells containing 

 eggs, a substance of a different appearance from that 

 which bees commonly collect around their newly- 

 hatched young, he conjectured it might be what 

 Maraldi had supposed, and he became on that ac- 

 count anxious to watch the proceedings of every male 

 bee in the hive. He accordingly observed some of 

 the smaller males, which are produced in workers' 

 cells, visiting the cells containing eggs, for the pur- 

 pose, as he supposed, of fertilizing them ; and farther, 

 he found that those eggs actually did become pro- 

 ductive, whilst others remained sterile. By repeating 

 these observations, and by devising various experi- 

 ments to verify it, he proved to his own satisfaction 

 that the opinion of Maraldi was correct f. Bonnet 

 objected at first that the ordinary sized males were 

 too bulky to be able to reach the eggs in the bottom 

 of the workers' cells. One day, however, he observed 

 one of the larger males repeatedly striking the mouths 

 of cells, containing eggs, with his abdomen, a cir- 

 cumstance which he inferred to be favourable to the 

 theory J. 



But Reaumur, as Bonnet himself confesses, had 

 proved, by the most careful and rigorous experiment, 

 that from August till April there is not, in ordinary 

 cases, a single male, though the queen lays eggs in 



* Book of Nature, 1221. 



t Philosophical Trans, vol. 67. 



J Contempt* cle la Nature, CEuvres, x, 136> note 



