IN THE SILK-WORM MOTH. 95 



noticed by a later physiological school, namely that the ovaries 

 were not fertilized by copulation, but that after a copulation each 

 individual ready-formed egg is fertilized for itself. This appears 

 distinctly from his published investigations. Malpighi saw* 

 that the sulphur-yellow eggs taken out of the ovaries of a fecun- 

 dated silk-worm moth behaved exactly like unfecundated eggs ; 

 whilst an egg, which he discovered in the vagina of this moth, 

 acquired a violet colour in course of time, and consequently 

 showed itself to be fecundated. Malpighi derived this influence 

 from the contents of the bursa copulatrix, the signification of 

 which and its opening into the vagina he knewf. The seminal 

 receptacle also certainly had not escaped his searching glance, 

 but he had not comprehended its importance J. Pallas also 

 referred to the changes of colour undergone by the fertilized eggs 

 of the silk-worm moth and other moths after they have been laid. 

 He observed that the eggs of a Papilio Iris, which he cut out of 

 the body of a fecundated female, did not change their grass-green 

 colour, whilst the deposited eggs of a fertilized butterfly of this 

 kind became yellowish-green ; and from this he drew the correct 

 conclusion, that the fertilization of these eggs only takes place 

 during their passage through the vagina of the mother (see Note 

 on Hunter's experiments at p. 52). 



Exactly at the time when I had become acquainted with the 

 Parthenogenesis of the Psychida, my attention was called from 

 several sides to the occurrence of Parthenogenesis in Bombyx 

 Mori, in such a way that I could not avoid a closer examination 

 of the phaenomena here referred to. 



The principal incitement to this was furnished by the following 

 statement, made in the year 1851 by P. de' Filippi|| : " Je me 

 bornerai & citer un cas singulier, qui m'a ete raconte tout 

 dernierement par un celebre entomologiste anglais, M. John 

 Curtis, a son passage par Turin, d'une chrysalide isolee de 

 Bombyx poly phemus qu'il avait re9ue de PAmerique, et de laquelle 



* Marc. Malpighii Dissertatio de Bombyce, Londini, 1669, p. 82. 

 t Op. tit. p. 81. tab. 12. fig. 1. K, I, M. 

 t Op. cit. p. 80. tab. 12. fig. 1. E, F, G, H. 



See his Anmerkungen uber einige Besonderheiten an Insekten, in the 

 Stralsunder Magazin, band i. st. 3. 1768, p. 240. 



H See Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Zoologie, torn. v. 1851, p. 297. 



