206 Prof, von Siebold on the Law of 



bees, must also produce considerable excitement among the 

 breeders of bees, as Landois in so many words completely de- 

 nies the existence of the very peculiar parthenogenetic circum- 

 stances under which the male bees are developed from the eggs. 



Landois appeals to his repeatedly successful experiments by 

 which he thinks it is proved that all the eggs laid by a normal 

 queen are fertilized by her, that in consequence of this ferti- 

 lization the development of the larvae in the eggs takes place, 

 and, further, that these larvae when just hatched from the Qgg 

 dp not yet possess any definite indications of sex. The sex 

 of bees is rather [according to him] only fixed as male or fe- 

 male by the diff'erence of nourishment taken from without, 

 according as the workers furnish drone-food to those larvse in 

 the drone-cells, or worker-food to those in the worker-cells. 



Landois transferred the bottom of a drone-cell, furnished 

 with an Qgg, into a worker-cell, and vice versa the egg-bear- 

 ing bottom of a worker-cell into a drone-cell; and by this means 

 from the egg destined by the queen to become a worker, the 

 larva from which in consequence of this transfer was nourished 

 with drone-food, he obtained a drone, whilst from the egg 

 destined by the queen to become a drone, the larva of which 

 in consequence of a similar substitution was brought up on 

 worker-food, a worker was produced. 



Whether no error or illusion can occur in these experiments 

 must be decided by practised and experienced bee-keepers, to 

 whom I particularly recommend the repetition of this ex- 

 periment. For my part I can only appeal here to those 

 results which are to be obtained by anatomical and micro- 

 scopic investigations of the larvae of insects in course of de- 

 velopment within the egg. Taking these into consideration, 

 I feel compelled to express the greatest doubt as to the cor- 

 rectness of the new theory set up by Landois. 



From the very careful investigations of various reliable 

 observers in the domain of the developmental history of 

 insects, we know that, even in the eggj simultaneously with 

 the development of the different systems of organs of an 

 insect-larva, the sexual organs also begin to be formed, and 

 even become differentiated to such a degree that in a larva 

 which has just escaped from the egg-shell we are already able 

 to distinguish the male or female sex from the difference in 

 form of the first rudiments of the inner reproductive organs. 



Herold, the well-known insect-anatomist, obtained the 

 following results from his accurate investigations of the de- 

 velopment of the cabbage-butterfly* : — The organs which 



* See his ' Entwickelungsgeschichte der Schmetterlinge/ Kassel imd 

 Marburg, 1815, p. 1. 



