ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY. 179 
imperfect females. We owe the discovery of the 
female sex of the workers of the honey-bee to 
Mademoiselle Jurine.* Not to anticipate here what 
there will be occasion to discuss fully at. a later 
period, I would only add that the rudimentary female 
organs are usually much less perfectly developed, 
and found, accordingly, with much greater vena 
in the worker-bee than in the worker-wasp. 
To the general reader the part of these organs 
that has the greatest interest is unquestionably the 
sting. In the higher animals, with the exception of 
many birds and some beasts of prey, the male is 
most commonly the more powerful of the two sexes, 
and years the offensive armour. But in insects, as 
in spiders, this order is generally reversed; and, with 
the care of the young, which devolves on the female, 
is given the means of protecting them. Aristotlef 
has a singular remark that, “insects with four wings 
are distinguished by their greater size or a caudal 
sting. The Diptera are either such as are small, or 
have a sting in thei head.” In both these classes 
alike it is the female which carries the weapon; not 
only in the Hymenoptera, where the sting consists 
of a portion of the male organs in a transformed 
state, but in the Diptera, where the biting instrument 
is common to both sexes. Fleas know no such dis- 
tinction, and the male seems to bite worse than the 
* T have no more direct authority at hand to refer to for this state- 
ment than the note in Van Der Hoeven’s ‘ Handbook,’ Vol. I, p. 271, 
with references to Huber, ‘ Nouv. Observ. sur les Abeilles.’ 
+ Aristotle’s ‘ History of Animals,’ transl. by Cresswell, p. 8, 
Book I. chap. V, § 5. 
N 2 
