26 HISTORY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 



trates the body of the queen. This opinion arose 

 from his observing a very strong odour to be ex- 

 haled, at certain times, from the drones ; " Hanc 

 sententiam ratam habuit, quia organa apum propa- 

 gini servientia, sexus utriusque, rite dissecta, inter 

 se ita disparia videbantur, ut congressus ne fieri 

 quidem ullo pacto posset." His opinion with re- 

 spect to the vivifying influence of the seminal aura 

 also accounted satisfactorily, to his own mind, 

 for there being such a prodigious number of 

 drones, as, in proportion to their number, would 

 of course be the intensity of their peculiar 

 odour. Reaumur very successfully combated 

 this fanciful doctrine, and Huber has confuted 

 it by direct experiment. Reaumur inclined to 

 the opinion that there was a sexual intercourse, 

 though his experiments left that question unde- 

 cided. Arthur Dobbs, esq. has given it as his 

 opinion that the queen's eggs were impregnated 

 by coition with the drones, andj:hat a renewal of 

 the intercourse was unnecessary. He however 

 thought that she had intercourse with several, 

 instead of with one only, in order that there might 

 be a sufficient deposition of sperm to impregnate 

 all her eggs. About the beginning of the last 

 century, Maraldi broached another hypothesis ; 

 he imagined that the eggs were fecundated by the 

 drones, after the queen had deposited them in the 

 cells, similarly to what takes place in the fecun- 





