Bramble-bees and Others 



What will It yield, a male or a female? 

 No lodging has been prepared, no food 

 collected for it; and yet both food and 

 lodging have to be in keeping with the sex 

 that will proceed from it. And here is a 

 much more puzzling condition : the sex of 

 that egg, whose advent is predestined, has to 

 correspond with the space which the mother 

 happens to have found for a cell. There is 

 therefore no room for hesitation, strange 

 though the statement may appear: the egg, as 

 it descends from its ovarian tube, has no de- 

 termined sex. It is perhaps during the few 

 hours of its rapid development at the base of 

 its ovarian sheath, it is perhaps on its pass- 

 age through the oviduct that it receives, at 

 the mother's pleasure, the final impress that 

 will produce, to match the cradle which it has 

 to fill, either a female or a male. 



Thereupon the following question presents 

 itself. Let us admit that, when the normal 

 conditions remain, a laying would have 

 yielded m females and n males. Then, if 

 my conclusions are correct, it must be in the 

 mother's power, when the conditions are dif- 

 ferent, to take from the m group and increase 

 the n group to the same extent; it must be 



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