36 HISTORY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 



to stem the torrent, and revive the long forgotten 

 idea suggested by Mr. Butler in his Feminine 

 Monarchy, that queens produce queens only, and 

 that the common bees are the mothers of common 

 bees." But all these fanciful notions must yield 

 to the clear and decisive experiments of Huber, 

 who has satisfactorily shown that the queen is the 

 general mother of all ; he has also resolved the 

 causes of former mistaken opinions. Many api- 

 arians have found a difficulty in admitting the 

 theory of Huber, in consequence of the very great 

 disproportion in the number of the sexes, there 

 being only one female to several hundred males, 

 and one impregnation being, in his opinion, all 

 that is required to fertilize myriads of eggs. The 

 number of drones may be considered as in ac- 

 cordance, in some degree, with the general pro- 

 fusion of nature : we find her abounding with 

 supernumeraries in a great variety of instances, in 

 the blossoms of trees and flowers, as well as in the 

 relative number of one sex to the other among 

 animals. Huber conceives that it was necessary 

 there should be a great number of drones, that 

 the queen might be sure of finding one, in her ex- 

 cursion through the expanse of the atmosphere, 

 and run no risk of sterility. 



In page 26 I have stated the opinion of Mr. 

 Dobbs, that a queen has intercourse with several 

 drones ; and what I have also stated upon the au- 



