NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HONEY-BEE. 35 



spermatozoa which characterizes the seminal fluid. A 

 comparison of this substance, later in the season, with the 

 semen of a drone, proved them to be exactly alike. 



These examinations have settled, on the impregnable 

 basis of demonstration, the mode in which the eggs of the 

 queen are vivified.. In descending the oviduct to be 

 deposited in the cells, they pass by the mouth of this semi- 

 nal sac, or " spermatheca^ and receive a portion of its fer- 

 tilizing contents. Small as it is, it contains sufficient to 

 impregnate hundreds of thousands of eggs. In precisely 

 the same way, the mother-wasps and hornets are fecund- 

 ated. The females only of these insects survive the Win- 

 ter, and often a single one begins the construction of a 

 nest, in which at first only a few eggs are deposited. How 

 could these eggs hatch, if the females had not been impreg- 

 nated the previous season ? Dissection proves that they 

 have a spermatheca similar to that of the queen-bee. It 

 never seems to have occui'red to the opponents of Huber, 

 that the existence of a 

 permanently impregnated 

 mother- wasp is quite as 

 difficult to be accounted 

 for, as the existence of 

 a similarly impregnated 

 queen-bee. 



The celebrated Swam- 

 merdam, hi his observa- 

 tions upon insects, made 

 in the latter part of the 

 seventeenth century, has 

 given a highly magni- 

 fied drawing of the ova- 

 ries of the queen-bee, a 

 reduced copy of which I 



