406 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



use in her sperm-receptacle or sac, since it has been 

 shown that unfertilized eggs in these and allied insects 

 produce only drones (males). 



Many strange and unwarranted beliefs persist because 

 mankind prefers to accept an astonishing assertion as 

 true rather than take the trouble to see whether it is so 

 or not. Thus all antiquity and the later learned world 

 wrangled about the very existence of Homer's city of 

 Troy, until Schliemann said, " Don't talk ! Dig ! " and 

 with childlike simplicity and directness uncovered ancient 

 Troy. Thus the belief as to St. Swithin and his forty 

 days of rain has been shown by the simple examination 

 of the actual records of rainfall to be very far from the 

 truth, since, though we often have a wet period in July 

 and August, St. Swithin's Day is nearly as often free 

 from rain in a wet season as the reverse. Forty days 

 of rain very rarely indeed, in the South of England, have 

 followed a wet St. Swithin's Day. The most amusing 

 instance of the pricking of one of these bubbles of belief 

 arose from the inquiry by some of the sham philosophers 

 at the Court of King Charles II as to how it comes 

 about that if a jar holding water be weighed, and then 

 a live fish be placed therein without spilling any of the 

 water, and the jar, with the fish and the water in it, be 

 again weighed, there is found to be no increase in the 

 observed weight. King Charles, it is said, made a bet 

 that this was not so, and that there was nothing to 

 explain. He referred the matter for decision to the 

 newly founded " Royal Society for the Promotion of 

 Natural Knowledge," which at other times he had asked 

 to give him information as to the magic properties of the 

 unicorn's horn and the cause of the movements of the 

 recently imported " sensitive or humble plant." The 

 believers in the marvellous disappearance of the weight 



