438 INSECTS. 



irritation, and to examine their specific character with the utmost 

 care. This my assistant undertook, and executed with great ad 

 dress. Eleven days were employed in it; and during all that time, 

 he scarcely allowed himself any relaxation, but what the relief of 

 his eyes required. He took every bee in his hand ; he attentively 

 examined the trunk, the hind limbs, and the sting ; and he found 

 that there was not one without the characteristics of the common 

 bee, that is, the little basket on the hind legs, the long trunk, and 

 the straight sting." 



They afterwards seized a fertile worker in the very act of laying; 

 and they thus describe her appearance. She presented all the ex- 

 ternal characteristics of common bees; the only difference we 

 could recognize, and that was a very slight one, consisting in the 

 belly seeming less, and more slender than that of workers. On 

 dissection, her ovaries were found more fragile, smaller, and com- 

 posed of fewer oviducts than the ovaries of queens. We counted 

 eleven eggs of sensible size, some of which appeared ripe for laying. 

 This ovary was double, like that of the queens." How or when 

 these fertile workers are impregnated is quite unknown. 



Fertile workers resemble queens whose impregnation has been 

 retarded, in this, that they lay the eggs of drones only, never those 

 of workers ; and also in this, that they sometimes place their eggs 

 in royal cells. It is remarkable, however, that in case a queen, 

 whose impregnation has been retarded, lays her eggs in royal cells, 

 the bees build them up, and brood over them until the last meta- 

 morphosis of the included drones ; but that when eggs are depo- 

 sited in the royal cells by fertile workers, the bees, although at first 

 they pay due attention to the larves, never fail to destroy them iu 

 the course of a few days. 



Schirach's discoveries certainly proved, that common working 

 bees are radically of the female sex. Huber, we have seen, de- 

 tected and described their ovaries ; and the notion, long entertained, 

 of their being of the neuter gender, must be now justly exploded as 

 a solescism in animated nature. Here, we cannot help observing, 

 that the doctrine of workers being of the female sex has accident- 

 ally, and most unintentionally, received a very striking collateral 

 confirmation from one of its most eminent opposers. Linnaeus had 

 asserted that there are ten joints in the antenuas of queens ; eleven 

 in those of drones ; and fifteen in those of workers : and his usser. 



