20 HISTORY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 



Lusatia and vicar of Little Bautzen, may be re- 

 garded as the discoverer, or rather as the pro- 

 mulgator of this fact ; and his experiments, which 

 were also frequently repeated by other members 

 of the Lusatian Society, have been amply con- 

 firmed by those of Huber and Bonner. Mr. Keys 

 was a violent sceptic upon this subject (See his 

 communications to the Bath Society) ; so likewise 

 was Mr. Hunter (Fide Philosophical Transactions). 

 But notwithstanding the criticisms and ridicule of 

 the former, and the sarcastic strictures of the latter, 

 the sex of workers is now established beyond all 

 doubt. The fact is said to have been known long 

 before Schirach wrote : M. Vogel and Signor Mon- 

 ticelli, a Neapolitan professor, have both asserted 

 this ; the former states it to have been known up- 

 wards of fifty years, the latter a much longer 

 period ; he says that the Greeks and Turks in the 

 Ionian Islands are well acquainted with it, and that 

 in the little Sicilian island of Favignana, the art 

 of producing queens has been known from very 

 remote antiquity ; he even thinks that it was no 

 secret to the Greeks and Romans, though, as 

 Messrs. Kirby and Spence observe, had the prac- 

 tice been common, it would surely have been noti- 

 ced by Aristotle or Pliny. The result ofSchirach's 

 experiments was that all workers were origi- 

 nally females, but that their organs of generation 

 were obliterated, merely because the germs of 



