96 PARTHENOGENESIS 



naquit une femelle dont tous les ceufs se developperent. Je crois 

 que la meme chose a lieu quelquefois dans les femelles de Bom- 

 byx Mori, quoique tout a fait separees des males." 



This notice brought to my mind several other communications 

 as to the possibility of a Parthenogenesis in Bombyx Mori, upon 

 which I was now compelled to lay the greater stress, after Filippi, 

 whom I knew to be a thoroughly cautious physiologist, had come 

 forward as a witness to the correctness of this assertion. I re- 

 called to mind a statement of Mogling's*, that the female moth 

 of Bombyoe Mori lays 350 to 480 eggs, which might be capable 

 of development although the female was not fertilized by any 

 malef. Here also evidently belongs that observation of Bour- 

 sier's which was reported some years ago in the Comptes Rendus%, 

 that a female silk-worm moth, which had not copulated with a 

 male, had been exposed by Boursier, sometimes to the sun and 

 sometimes to the shade, during which treatment the moth laid 

 many eggs, of which those which were laid in the sun furnished 

 caterpillars. Although no one will attribute the fertilization of 

 the eggs in the preceding case, as Boursier has done, to the in- 

 fluence of the light and heat of the sun, we shall not be able to 

 help seeing a Parthenogenesis in this phenomenon. I applied 

 to Filippi himself, in order to obtain something further from 

 him as to the propagation of the silk-worm moth sine concubitu, 

 as he lives in a country in which the cultivation of silk is carried 

 on to a very great extent ; and he certainly could easily have 

 collected observations upon the subject in question. Filippi 

 wrote to me on the 29th of May 1852, as follows : " Quant aux 

 oeufs de Bombyx Mori eclos sans fecondation prealable, voila ce 

 que je pourrais ajouter. C'est en 1850 que j'ai eu occasion 

 d'observer une chose pareille avec des vers a soie de la variete 

 dite parmi nous des trevoltini (c'est a dire qui peuvent etre 

 eleves trois fois dans 1'annee). Aussi M. Gnseri, qui s'occupe 

 beaucoup de Peducation des vers a soie, a trouve que plusieurs 



* See his book upon the Silk-worm, 1847, p. 89. 



t Mogling here refers to the Notices sur les Educations des Vers a Soie 

 faites en 1840 par M. Robinet, which have not yet come under my notice. 



I See Comptes Rendus, No. 12. 1847, or Notizen von Schleiden und Froriep, 

 band v. 1848, p, 20. 



