Permutations of Sex 



huntress, can dispense with the equivalent in 

 order to hatch and produce a male? These 

 new-fangled theories seem to me to have very 

 little value. 



One might also bring forward the case of 

 the Three-pronged Osmia, who distributes the 

 two sexes without any order in the hollow of 

 her reed. What singular whim is the mother 

 obeying when, without decisive motive, she 

 opens her seminal phial at haphazard to 

 anoint a female egg, or else keeps it closed, 

 also at haphazard, to allow a male egg to 

 pass unfertilized? I could imagine impreg- 

 nation being given or withheld for periods of 

 some duration; but I cannot understand im- 

 ^pregnation and non-impregnation following 

 upon each other anyhow, in any sort of order 

 or rather with no order at all. The mother 

 has just fertilized an egg. Why should she 

 refuse to fertilize the next, when neither the 

 provisions nor the lodgings differ in the small- 

 est respect from the previous provisions and 

 lodgings? These capricious alternations, so 

 unreasonable and so exceedingly erratic, are 

 scarcely appropriate to an act of such im- 

 portance. 



But I promised not to argue and I find my- 



187 



