SUPPOSED CASES OF PARTHENOGENESIS. 13 



perfectly credible observations and such as exclude all doubt can 

 be admitted as of sufficient weight to abolish the law : that true 

 eggs (produced in an ovary) cannot become developed into an 

 embryo, until they have first been exposed to the fertilizing in- 

 fluence of the male semen (produced in testes). 



The oldest communication relative to the reproduction of fe- 

 male insects sine concubitu, and one which has been repeatedly 

 quoted, is due to the surgeon J. P. Albrecht of Hildesheim, who, 

 in the year 1701, sent in to the Leopoldine Academy of Natu- 

 ralists, a memoir with the title* " De Insectorum ovis sine prsevia 

 maris cum fcemella conjunctione nihilominus nonnunquam fce- 

 cundis." In this memoir Albrecht relates that he took a brown 

 pupa, which had spun itself up on a black-currant bush, and pre- 

 served it under a glass in his summer-house, to see what moth 

 would be evolved from it. At the end of July a moth of a yellow- 

 ish-white colour escaped from it ; this is not more particularly 

 described, but as Albrecht has compared it with the Moth figured 

 by Godart in his Metamorphosis et Historia Insectorum (Pars I.) 

 on tab. 33, we may suppose that it was either a Bombyx or a 

 Noctua. This moth in a few days laid a great number of eggs 

 and then died. Upon this Albrecht has the following remark : 

 "Cum masculum huic papilioni haud adfuisse certus essem et 

 propterea ejus ova subventanea et sterilia esse judicarem, vix 

 amplius eorum habui rationem, relictis interim iisdem oscitantius 

 et sine omni cura sub dicto vitro per totum tempus hyemale." 

 It was only in April of the following year that Albrecht again 

 looked after the glass, and was astonished at finding young black 

 caterpillars in it instead of the eggs. As Albrecht has given no 

 exact description, either of the nature of the glass, or of the mode 

 in which it was closed, and did not watch either the glass or its 

 contents with the necessary care, it does not appear from this 

 case, whether the openings of the glass in which the moth was 

 kept were closed in such a manner that no male moth of the 

 same species could have found admittance and an opportunity of 

 copulating with the enclosed female. The same surgeon also 

 mentions a Spider, which had been in the possession of Dr. 

 St. Blancard, and which for four consecutive years laid eggs 



* See Miscellanea curiosa sive Ephemeridum Academics Casar. Leopold. 

 Natur. Curios. Dec. iii. Annus ix. & x. 1706, p. 26. 



