EXPERIMENTAL INQUIRIES. 263 
the queen no more females, perfect or imperfect, are 
produced. And, for want of a continued supply of 
these, the swarm languishes and fails, and the nest 
is ultimately deserted, the queen never having been 
replaced in her full maternal capacity. 
The explanation of these facts brings us to a 
subject on which the state of our knowledge is not 
as yet precise and positive enough to allow us to 
dispense with the details of observations and expe- 
riments. We cannot yet assert with certainty that 
the conclusions of Siebold as to Parthenogenesis* in 
the honey-bee are applicable, without any qualifi- 
cation, to wasps. From my own more recent obser- 
vations, some of which I have subjoined, I think that 
this principle is applicable to wasps as closely as to 
bees, but I must own formerly to have been inclined 
rather to a contrary conclusion, for want of allowing 
sufficiently for the retardation of development under 
unfavourable circumstances. 
In the discussions which have been incidentally 
introduced in the course of this work, the thought 
may have intruded itself on the reader that some of 
the subjects discussed had no nearer connection with 
wasps than with any other insects. The theory of 
flight, for instance, and the source of the sound 
which insects make, might have been investigated, 
perhaps, just as well in connection with flies as with 
wasps. But the subject of Parthenogenesis is spe- 
* Siebold, ‘On a true Parthenogenesis in Moths and Bees,’ trans- 
lated by Dallas. 8vo, London, 1857. 
+ The history of this nest formed the subject of a communication to 
the ‘ Zoologist,’ 1858, Vol. XVII, p. 6641. 
