Bramble-bees and Others 



portion of food. The searching microsope 

 shows me nothing in them to explain the fatal 

 ending. 



To the unprejudiced mind, the answer is 

 obvious. Those eggs do not hatch because 

 they have not been fertilized. Any animal or 

 vegetable egg that had not received the life- 

 giving impregnation would perish in the same 

 way. No other answer is possible. It is no | 

 use tallcing of the distant period of the lay- 

 ing: eggs of the same period laid by other 

 mothers, eggs of the same date and likewise 

 the final ones of a laying, are perfectly fer- 

 tile. Once more, they do not hatch because 

 they were not fertilized. 



And why were they not fertilized? Be- 

 cause the seminal receptacle, so tiny, so diffi- 

 cult to see that it sometimes escaped me de- 

 spite all my scrutiny, had exhausted Its con- 

 tents. The mothers in whom this receptacle 

 retained a remnant of sperm to the end had 

 their last eggs as fertile as the first; the 

 others, whose seminal reservoir was ex- 

 hausted too soon, had their last-born stricken 

 with death. All this seems to me as clear as 

 daylight. 



If the unfertilized eggs perish without 



190 



