On the Fertilization of the Scarlet Runner. 255 



composed exclusively of male cells selected elsewhere, some 

 living workers and their queen ; all the bees produced in these 

 cells were workers. I see nothing in this opposed to the theory 

 of M. Landois ; the eggs deposited in the drone-cells fur- 

 nished workers because the bees had furnished them, after 

 dejmsition^ with worker food. We may add, in support of 

 this opinion, that the queen had deposited two eggs which the 

 workers destined to the production of males, as they closed 

 the cells with convex lids. But they afterwards destroyed 

 these eggs, because it was exactly at the season (very ill- 

 chosen by MM. Sanson and Bastian) when they kill the 

 drones. 



Lastly, what, it seems to me, must give the cause to M. 

 Landois, is that MM. Sanson and Bastian have seen de- 

 posited in worker-cells eggs which gave origin to males. 

 These two naturalists, indeed, endeavour to explain the fact 

 by means of Dzierzon's theory. The queen, they say, was 

 old, and her spermatic reservoir no longer contained a suffi- 

 ciency of spermatozoids, for it was semitransparent. Now, 

 if the seminal receptacle is opaque when it is completely full, 

 it is perfectly transparent when empty, and it seems to me 

 that when we find it only semitransparent, it will still 

 contain far too many spermatozoids to allow the observer to 

 think that the eggs have not been fecundated. 



XXX. — On the manner of Fertilization of the Scarlet Runner 

 and Blue Lobelia. By T. H. Farrer, Esq. 



To the Editors of the Annals and Magazine of Natural History. 



Gentlemen, 



The following notes of observations on the fertilizing-appa- 

 ratus of the scarlet runner and the common blue lobelia, made 

 by one who has not the slightest pretence to scientific know- 

 ledge, would never have been sent to the press, but for the 

 kind suggestion of Mr. Charles Darwin, to whom they have 

 been communicated. That these interesting facts, if not men- 

 tioned by previous observers, should have escaped his notice 

 never occurred to me for a moment, although at the time this 

 paper was written I had not seen his papers on the fertilization 

 of the kidney bean in the ^ Gardeners' Chronicle ' of the 24th 

 of October 1857 and the 14th November 1858, which he has 

 kindly sent me. In these papers the structure and functions 

 of the kidney bean are fully given, with his own interesting 

 experiments ; and though in them the details of the lobelia 



18* 



